The Die
by Colubrina
Summary: Years after the war is over Hermione sees Draco alone in a pub. When she invites him back to her flat the die is cast and it becomes possible that two very damaged people might, eventually, find peace. "You know me dark, you know me cruel, you know me shaking in the night and you're still here." Dramoine.
1. Chapter 1 - The Pub

Hermione turned the bookstore sign from open to closed, turned off the lights and stood at the glass front window. He was there again. In the pub across the street sat a man, unmistakable with his white blond hair. Every night for three weeks she'd seen him, sitting alone by the little window in the corner of the pub, drinking. She'd started to watch for him. People pulled their robes away as he walked past. At least twice she'd seen someone spit in the ground at his feet. It wasn't easy to be a former Death Eater in post-war wizarding London, even with money and a pardon.

She looked around her store. Rare books surrounded her. Manuscripts, bizarre muggle tomes on magic, and a collection of very expensive first edition Jane Austen novels; she tried not to remember how much she'd paid for those. Still, when you're a war hero, part of the Golden Trio, you didn't get spit at; instead the ministry tried to buy away their guilt for using you with money and awards. Every year they gave her another statue. Every year she threw it in a box in the basement. Harry wouldn't even go to the ceremonies. Ron went, drank heavily, stayed for about half an hour, and hugged her tightly. Then he'd mutter into her hair, "I have to get out of here" and leave to escape back into the Cotswolds. He and Lavender had four kids now; she was godmother to two of them. Harry and Ginny had three. Whenever anyone asked any of them, any of the so-called Golden Trio, how they were doing they smiled and said, "Fine, fine." They all lied. Even being together was hard. They loved each other but some things you can't escape. To be together was to relive a childhood fighting Voldemort and none of them could stand it for long. The hardest part was that no one really understood. It was the worst for Harry. Hermione regularly thanked anyone in the universe who might be listening that Ginny existed and was there for Harry. Lavender too, though Ron also had his family. She, well, she had her books. She had her lovely, lovely books and a standing appointment with a very good therapist who'd helped her past the worst of the post-war trauma. She wasn't exactly well but she wasn't a drunk and she wasn't hiding in the country. She counted that as a win. "I'm still swimming," she said out loud in the empty shop.

She looked back at the man in the pub. He was slumped at his table, blond head bowed over his drink. She wondered how he had the courage to walk through streets filled with people who hated him, who knew who he was because of that distinctive hair. She wondered why he didn't use a glamour to hide it. Was it pride or self-loathing that drew him to walk through streets and be shunned for who he was rather than greeted pleasantly for someone he wasn't? To drink at a pub rather than to get quietly drunk at home?

Before she could reconsider what was clearly an insane idea she grabbed her purse, let herself out the door, and walked across the street from her shop to the pub. She nodded at the barmaid as she entered, made her way across the floor and sat down across the table from Draco Malfoy.

He looked up at her. Not drunk, she thought. Years of experience with Ron had made her good at quickly assessing how drunk a man was. Not drunk, just very, very sad. Another thing with which I am too familiar, she thought.

"Granger."

"How are you, Draco?"

"What are you doing here?" The attitude was little more than a grave rubbing, a flat copy of the arrogance she remembered. It broke us all, she thought, the war broke us all.

"I own the shop across the way. I saw you in the window and - " she paused. What to say? 'I thought I'd pop over and ask how you are?' Obviously ridiculous. They had never been on drinking buddy terms and, besides, he was clearly dreadful. She'd been able to see that from across the street.

"And you wanted to come over and have a go at me? Have a little fun excoriating the Death Eater?"

"No. I..." Hermione rarely felt at a loss for words. What to say? I came over because I am alone, because the only two people who understand how I feel can't bear to be in the same room with me for more than a few hours. Because I saw you and thought maybe there was someone who also wakes screaming in the night, who won't tell me to get over it and move on.

She settled for "I saw you and wanted to say hello. I haven't seen you in years. I didn't even know you were in London."

She pushed her sleeves up and folded her arms on the smooth wood of the table. He looked at them steadily and then said, "I'm surprised you're willing to be seen with me, a war hero like you."

She stared at his face, at those grey eyes looking down at her arms.

"Most people," he continued, "do not feel that Death Eaters make for good drinking companions."

"There was a time," she said quietly, "when it would have been you unwilling to be seen with me."

He reached out and touched the faint scar that remained on her arm. Mudblood.

"Oddly," he said, "seeing the racist themes of my childhood brought to a violent extreme cured me of any belief in them." His tone was mockingly light even as he never stopped staring at her scar. "It's one thing to say that muggle born wizards shouldn't be invited over for tea. It's quite another to cackle gleefully as you torture them in the drawing room." He put his hands over his face and crumpled down into them. "Oh, Granger, I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sor..."

She cut him off. Suddenly she was angry.

"Stop." Hermione leaned forward onto her elbows. "If you want to apologize for being a prat when you were 11, or calling me mudblood for years, or being in general a spoiled bully while we were at Hogwarts I'm happy to listen. But you don't get to apologize for war crimes."

If it were possible for a body to droop even more, Draco's did. That just made her angrier, though she wasn't sure at what. At him for apologizing? At the crazy wizarding world that had taught him to hate her?

"And do you know why?" Hermione continued. "Because you didn't commit any. You were a child. You were brainwashed into that ridiculous blood purity ideology, you were drafted into a war by people who should have been protecting you from it, and then you were terrorized by a bloody madman who threatened to torture and kill your parents if you didn't murder for him. And you know what?" Her voice was low and insistent. "You STILL didn't commit murder."

"Because I'm a coward on top of everything else."

"NO. Because you aren't a fucking awful human being. Because there's a huge gap between being a stuck up, bullying child and a Death Eater and I don't care what that lunatic branded into your arm. You weren't a Death Eater. You aren't a Death Eater. You were a victim, a child soldier in a war you didn't ask for and couldn't possibly have understood in any real detail. You were a victim of adults who shouldn't have used you to fight their battles. So was I. " She looked down at the table and muttered, so softly he wasn't sure he heard her. "Hell, so was Harry."

She looked up at him and he quickly looked down, unable to meet that direct, angry gaze. "You just had the shitty luck to be a child soldier on the wrong side, so now people call you a monster instead of a hero."

"So, no, I won't forgive you." She reached out and placed her hands around his. "Draco, there's nothing to forgive."

He closed his eyes and inhaled very slowly. When he opened them she was looking directly at him. "Granger, I..."

"Hermione. Please."

He swallowed. "Hermione, I... " he looked down again. "I don't think I can forgive myself. I stood there as my aunt tortured you. How can you even bear to touch me?"

She very calmly took her hands in hers. "You didn't do it. You couldn't have stopped it. It was not your fault." There was a long pause. "Come."

Draco looked at her, numb, as she dropped his hands, dredged some galleons out of a seemingly bottomless purse, set them on the table, and stood up.

"My flat is above the bookstore across the way. We can have tea. You can sleep there; I have some dreamless sleep potion. We can talk about this again in the morning."

She held out her hand.

He looked at her. "You should never let a drowning person cling to you, Hermione. All they'll do is drag you down with them."

"I," she said, "am an excellent swimmer. I can get you to shore, Draco."

He stood up.

"You are making a mistake," he said.

"No," she said. "I'm not."

He took her hand.

"Alea iacta est," she said. They walked out of the pub together.

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Thank you **Honoria Granger** for helping me with some embarrassing punctuation issues!


	2. Chapter 2 - Tea

Her shop was meticulous, almost a shrine to books, but Draco wondered exactly how she managed to live above a space that could politely be described as "cozy."

"How many customers do you get in here?" he asked as they climbed the stairs at the back.

"That just pop in and then leave? Maybe two to three every day. This isn't really the sort of bookstore where you get novels to read or a new cookbook. I cater to collectors and specialists and they usually make an appointment." She trailed her fingers along the spines of books on shelves built into the back wall, a veritable bibliographic caress. Draco stared at her hands, neat short fingernails and no jewelry, as she opened the door at the top of the stairs to her flat.

He'd expected a tiny, dark London apartment. He was wrong. The flat was spacious, open. Airy, even. Hermione Granger didn't seem to believe in clutter or knick knacks but what she had for furniture and decorations managed to be inviting even as it was simple and beautiful. Draco had the sudden, almost heretical, thought that his mother would approve of Granger's taste in décor.

"I didn't realize this much wizard space was legal in London," was all he said.

"You'd be surprised how many things the Ministry is willing to overlook when you're a war hero," she sounded surprisingly bitter as she moved towards an open kitchen and filled a kettle.

"Do you want herbal or black?"

"What?"

"Tea. Herbal or black? And do you take milk or sugar."

"Oh. Black would be nice. And no, I don't care for milk or sugar. Thank you."

"It makes me feel dirty to let them do things like this for me, to let them assuage their well deserved guilt by ridiculous bits of petty corruption like overlooking building code violations, but I decided to just take it when it came to the flat. The shop is so small, you know? And living in the space that tiny would make me feel confined and claustrophobic." Hermione was spooning loose tea into a pot.

Draco wandered through the living area, not sure whether to sit or stand. There were shelves filled with books, clearly much loved and re-read. A fireplace with a lovely wooden box set next to it. Floo powder, he assumed. Above the mantle was a framed print of what looked vaguely like a shell against a blue background. He stared at it, fascinated.

"I didn't know you liked muggle art."

"What?"

"The print. It's _Dépouille by _Fautrier. I mean, it's a print of course. The original is in a museum."

"It's beautiful but somehow terrible." Draco felt suddenly even more awkward, if such were possible, standing in the lovely flat of this woman who had to be mad to even speak to him, much less invite him up for tea, admiring her taste in art. Worse, he felt he'd somehow revealed something utterly intimate and personal in his opinion. Who tells a woman that the print above her fireplace is beautiful AND terrible?

But all she said was, "It is, isn't it?" and handed him a heavy cup filled with tea.

He leaned against the wall, cup in hand, and looked at her.

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why are you doing this? Why are you inviting me up here, giving me tea?" The words fell out of his mouth in a sudden torrent. "No one acts without having some kind of selfish motivation. Sometimes people want money. Sometimes people want power or influence. Sometimes they want to feel good about themselves for helping the less fortunate. Is that what it is? Am I going to be your newest SPEW project? Gods know you don't need money and I haven't any influence. What do you want from me?"

She looked at him. "Why were you in that pub?"

"What?"

"Wizarding London is filled with pubs. And if you wanted to go out into Muggle London you'd have even more choices. Yet you came, night after night, to the pub across the street from my shop. Why?"

Draco froze.

"You aren't stupid. And you're an excellent wizard; a charm to disguise yourself would be trivial for you. You knew this was my shop, I'm sure of it. And you sat there where I could see you, easily recognizable, for weeks. Why?"

"I think I should go." But he didn't move, staring at her, a deer caught in blinding light.

"NO!"

Draco was surprised at how vehement she was. And, unwillingly, enchanted by the cunning smile that tweaked her lips up. "You tell me yours and I'll tell you mine. You tell me why you were in that pub, and don't try to fob me off with something like 'to get a drink' and I'll tell you why I dragged you up here for tea."

"I had no idea, Granger, you could be so manipulative." He slid down the wall, leaned against it and set the cup on the floor between his feet. He stared at the grain of the wood. There was a scar from some long ago accident. He wondered why she didn't fix it. Then he spoke. "I was trying to work up the courage to apologize to you."

He didn't look up but he could feel her sit down, also on the floor, at his feet. "Oh."

"You won't let me apologize for the war."

"No." Her voice was very small.

"Then, Hermione Granger, I would like to apologize for being unkind to you in school. I could blame it on the teachings of my parents but I should have known better. I am sorry for the way I treated you." The words were stiff, rote. It wasn't this he wanted atonement for. It wasn't for this he'd sat in that window, watching her shop, telling himself he was a worthless coward who not only couldn't object to torture but who couldn't even express remorse to the victim years later.

"I accept your apology."

"Hermione, I am so sorry..."

"Don't."

He looked up. She had a single tear hanging, rather ungracefully, at the tip of her nose. "You do not get to apologize for the war because you have nothing to apologize for."

"You mentioned that."

"I'll keep saying it until you believe me."

"That may take a while."

"Well, we're young and wizards live a long time."

Draco was surprised into a laugh. "You are something else, you know that Hermione Granger?"

"Well," she took a sip from her tea and tried to subtly, and unsuccessfully, to get the tear off her nose, "I am the brightest witch of my age."

He reached out and brushed the drop away. "So I heard, relentlessly, in school." He paused. "Your turn. What do you want from me?" He wouldn't let himself look away, he forced himself to study her face. Old Slytherin skills of verbal sparring that had been drilled into him resurfaced. 'Watch your opponent,' his mind whispered, 'see what she reveals.'

She didn't say anything. He watched her trace the scar in the wooden floor near his feet with her finger.

"Hermione, why are you living alone, running a store with expensive stock and no customers? Why do you have a controlled potion readily available to share?" Still no answer.

"Where are your friends?" he pursued.

"Where are yours?" she challenged.

"Granger, you know perfectly well I didn't have friends. I had minions. I had followers. Now that I am persona non grata they won't touch me with the proverbial ten-foot pole." He heard his voice getting bitter. "Sure, their parents were Death Eaters but THEY weren't. They had no idea what was going on, totally innocent, pure as the driven snow. All those parties at the Manor that they attended? Forgotten. They'd be the first to kick me in the street just to prove their loyalty to the new regime."

"I'm sorry," she murmured.

"Not your fault." He continued to look at her. "Hermione, you had friends. Real friends. Where are they? Why are you here, alone, with me?"

She looked up, finally. "Ron lives in the Cotswolds with Lavender. Harry and Ginny are in the Lake District. Lots of kids, both happy. We see each other a few times a year but, well, it's hard."

He studied her. 'People are uncomfortable with silence,' he could hear childhood lessons whispering in his head. 'Just let them sit in silence and they'll tell you everything you need to know.'

"We can't stand to be together," she finally said. "It dredges everything up for all three of us. Alone we're just lonely, but together it's as if we are, emotionally, back in the thick of it. It's worst for Harry; he starts having panic attacks. Ron drinks a lot anyway but when he's not around Harry and me it's under control. Around us he gets stinking drunk every time. I start having flashbacks and…" she trailed off.

"And what?"

"The nightmares get worse. It's why I have the dreamless sleep around. I'm not supposed to take it more than 2 nights a week, and never twice in a row. But whenever I see Ron or Harry the nightmares get so bad." She was shaking. Physically shaking. Draco reached a hand out to her but she was staring at that scar in the floor and didn't see it. "No one understands. They prate about being a war hero and tell me I should be happy and move on. He's dead, Harry killed him. Bellatrix is dead. They're all dead. Be happy. Want a job in the Ministry? Sure it's a powerless sinecure so we can use you for your war hero cachet, but it's yours. We'll do anything for you. Money? Take some? Illegally large flat? Here you go. Everything they have and more. Everything but making the nightmares go away. Everything but making the loneliness go away."

"The boys aren't lonely, though, are they Granger," Draco murmured. "Not like you are. Wives and kids fill their days and you, you're here with your books."

"Would you please make up your mind whether you are going to call me 'Hermione' or 'Granger'," she snapped.

"Hermione," he took her hand and twined his fingers around hers.

They sat, each staring at the mark on the floor. 'I'm going to fix that,' thought Draco. 'No reason for a witch to have a nasty scrape like that in her hardwood.' The tea grew cold and the long tide of silence slowly turned from awkward to companionable.

Finally Hermione said, "Let me show you the guest room."

"You really did violate wizard space bylaws, didn't you?"

"Yeah," he could hear the hint of a smile in her voice, "I really did."

* _Dépouille__, which can be loosely translated as "human remains", is a mixed media work made by gluing layers of paper to canvas. It's part of Jean Fautrier's "Hostages" series, which is a response to the horrors of World War II. _


	3. Chapter 3 - Nightmare 1

Hermione could feel the knife cutting the word into her skin and hear Bellatrix laughing at her and she was screaming and she was screaming and it would never end and Draco Malfoy was watching her in mute horror and she screamed and screamed and someone was shaking her and shaking her and she was awake and it was over over over. She clenched down on herself, tightening her whole body against remembered pain and closed her eyes and took short, shallow breaths, willing her heart rate to slow down, willing herself to wake up all the way so she couldn't still feel a hand on her arm, couldn't still feel someone touching her.

The touch wasn't going way.

She opened her eyes, ready to see Bellatrix, ready for another replay.

"Hey."

Draco Malfoy, wearing the spare pajamas she kept around in case she actually ever had company, was staring at her, his hand on her arm. The light was on. It was over. She closed her eyes again and concentrated on breathing. The therapist had prescribed yogic breathing as a way to calm down after these attacks and she let herself inhale and exhale. How humiliating. Caught screaming her head off about a woman long dead in front of one of the characters in her own personal nightly horror movie.

She felt, rather than saw, him move closer to her on the bed. Felt him take his hand off her arm. Felt him put his hands on each side of her face. "Hey. It's OK. It's over. It wasn't real." She opened her eyes and waited to see tired contempt, the tired "aren't you over this yet" contempt everyone had for her. Instead he looked, what? Shocked? Worried?

"Well," she said. "Now you know why the dreamless sleep."

Draco looked at her for a long moment. An unexpected frisson of feminine vanity coursed through her and she wondered how her hair, her bushy hair he'd mocked all through school, looked. Was her face blotchy? He took his hands off her face and tucked her hair behind her ears. "Did I trigger this?" he asked.

"I don't know," she said. "Maybe. I was kind of due for one though. It's been a few weeks since I've had a bad one."

"Scootch over." He pushed her over and positioned himself so he was seated up against the headboard. He picked up the book off her nightstand and opened it to the page she had dog-eared.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm reading to you. My mother always read to me when I had a nightmare."

"You're what?"

"Reading to you." Draco held the book out and began:

"_Mr. Darcy had at first scarcely allowed her to be pretty: he had looked at her without admiration at the ball; and when they next met, he looked at her only to criticize. But no sooner had he made it clear to himself and his friends that she had hardly a good feature in her face, than he began to find it was rendered uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes."_

He stopped.

"What is this? Is this a romance novel?" His eyes began to glitter. "Is the lovely Hermione Granger reading _romance novels_?"

"Give me that, you prat."

But he held it out of her reach and teased again, "Romance novels, Hermione?" He watched her, watched the fear fade away from her eyes and the tension release from her muscles as she grabbed for the book.

"It's not a romance novel, it's Jane Austen."

"Who?"

"A muggle author. You wouldn't like her."

"Because she's a muggle?" He tried to muster as supercilious a tone as possible.

"No, you idiot, because she wrote romance novels!"

Draco burst out laughing. After a shocked moment, so did Hermione.

He opened the book again and began to read out loud. Hermione watched him, more interested in this complex man sitting in her bed than in the well-beloved novel. She could feel herself relaxing as he read on, as she watched him. That hair. Who had hair that pale and fine? She wondered what it felt like. She wondered, still, why he didn't hide it to protect himself from the hatred that followed him whenever he went out in Wizard London. Finally, she closed her eyes and just listened to his voice. After a while she could hear him close the book, feel the bed shift as he stood up to leave. He brushed her forehead.

"Tomorrow morning I'm going to take you to a breakfast place in muggle London. Best fried tomatoes you've ever had."

"You don't like muggles," she murmured, half-asleep.

"It's been seven years, Hermione. You don't know what I like. Rest." He let himself out of the room and the last thing she thought before sleep settled over her was that he'd called her the lovely Hermione Granger.


	4. Chapter 4 - Breakfast

He'd been right. The fried tomatoes at breakfast WERE excellent. Hermione leaned back in her chair and looked around. "How did you find this place?" she asked.

Draco smiled at her across the table. "Well, you may have noticed I'm not exactly beloved in our little community."

"I had seen that, yes."

"And not without reason."

"Don't," she warned.

"Don't what?"

"Don't believe for a moment you deserve one tiny drop of scorn from anyone."

"Well, whether I deserve it or not, it's there. And as you've pointed out my hair is distinctive so it's hard to go out and not be recognized. So I started wandering through…" he paused for a moment. "Other neighborhoods."

Draco had apparated back to his own London flat in the morning, changed clothes, and returned. He'd stood on the doorstep of the shop, unsure of his welcome until the witch had dragged him inside, pushed him into a chair, and told him to wait for a few minutes. Bemused and, eventually, impressed he'd listened to her haggle over the floo with a rare book shop in Brussels that had a copy of some manuscript one her customers wanted. Gone was the sobbing, terrified woman of the night before and in her place was a cool headed business woman who had closed the deal, closed the connection, turned to him and said, "I hope this place you're taking me too has champagne because after that coup I want to celebrate."

"No champagne on the menu," he'd said. "Maybe tonight?" Then he frozen, terrified that he'd presumed she'd not kick him out after breakfast and another pep talk about how he wasn't a horrible monster. But she'd just said, "That would be great." And now he studied her across the empty breakfast plates.

"We're fools to lock ourselves into our own little world," she said.

He looked at her, every inch a fashionable muggle out for breakfast. "Do you think of it as your world?" he asked.

"Despite the prejudice? Yeah, I do."

"Prejudice against the golden girl?"

"Oh yes. You should hear what people at the Ministry say when they don't know I can hear them. 'It's amazing what she accomplished given the handicap of her birth, isn't it?'" Hermione mimicked a government official with deadpan accuracy.

Draco choked off a laugh. How was this woman able to make him laugh so easily? "I think I might even know who that is."

"Oh, they all think it. You thought it. I'm not even sure why you don't anymore." She was looking at him, watching him closely. "How are you doing? Really? I think you know a lot about me after the last day with the screaming and such, but all I know about you is that you go out in muggle London to avoid being recognized, are beset with guilt, and look good in jeans."

"I look good in jeans?"

"Don't change the subject."

"You brought it up."

Draco sighed. "I have a flat in muggle London. Since I don't need to work for a living I mostly sit around and stare at its walls. I visit my mother every two weeks and we pretend everything is fine. I sometimes go to the theatre."

"What color are the walls?"

"What?"

"Of your flat. What color are the walls?"

"Off white." Draco looked at her, utterly confused.

"My guest room has off white walls."

"And?"

"You could stare at those instead, maybe? It would mean moving back to wizarding London though. Maybe you'd rather not be spit at when you pop out to get a paper."

"I deserve it, though."

"No, you don't." She narrowed her eyes at him. "We'll discuss that at greater length in our flat. After you move in."

"Hermione, why are you asking me to move in with you?" Draco stared at her. "Do you really want the most hated 20-something in wizarding England to move into your illegal spare room? I was there one night and I triggered a nightmare. You practically screamed yourself hoarse before I could wake you. Are you out of your mind?"

"No, I'm being totally rational. I'm asking Draco Malfoy, the man who read to me last night, who sat for three weeks working up the courage to talk to me…"

"And who never did it. You walked over to me. You're the brave one."

"… to move in with me," Hermione continued, as if he hadn't interrupted her. "Draco," she took a deep breath. "I need a friend. And I think you do too. We can be Slytherin about it if you like. We each need something. We're using each other."

Draco wondered if she'd always gotten that devious glint in her eye when she wanted something and, if so, how he'd missed it for the six years they'd been in boarding school together. He wondered if he'd lose his mind living with her and seeing that combination of rash bravery and cunning every day. He wondered (stars above help him) if she really thought he looked good in jeans.

"Look," she continued, as if there were any doubt he'd be in her spare room until she kicked him out, as if she had to talk him into this. "I told you I'd get you to shore. Let me."

"You have no idea what you're bringing down on your head by associating with me. People will hate you. The traffic in your bookstore will go from almost nothing to nothing."

"So what?" She shrugged. "At the end of the war the Ministry gave me more galleons as a reward than I could spend in three lifetimes. I don't actually need the bookstore to generate income."

Draco looked at her, helplessly. "Hermione…." Could she really be so naïve? "If they decide they want to, they could confiscate all that money." He should know; they'd confiscated enough of his.

"Unlikely," she said with a crisp tone that reminded him that, however much the war may have wounded her, and that however many nights she might wake screaming, she was also a terrifyingly competent woman. "I converted most of it to muggle money and moved it to banks outside of England. Trusting the Ministry isn't on my 'to do' list."

He began, against his better judgment, to laugh again. "Remind me never to underestimate you. I'm starting to feel sorry for Harry and Ron with you managing their escapades, though also I suspect I have a better idea how they got away with so much." He paused. "Hermione, that you've planned well financially still doesn't mean you can throw away your life for me. I am not worth it." How could he get her to understand the cost she would pay for this, how long could he hold out against her when he wanted so very badly to hide in her flat with that terrifyingly sad and beautiful print above the fireplace, with someone who would talk to him, with someone who seemed, for no good reason at all, to care about him. With someone who forgave him.

She looked at him. "Pay the tab and tell me you'll move in."

"Termagant."

"Draco…please."

And with that, even knowing in the core of his Slytherin soul that she was manipulating him, he was lost.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

**Duma **_ Thank you so much for your kind review! This is the first creative-type writing I've done in years and I'm thrilled you like it! _


	5. Chapter 5 - Champagne

Hermoine watched as Draco filled her glass with champagne again. It had taken him all of 30 minutes to move in. "My flat came furnished," he'd explained, "And I keep most of my stuff at the Manor anyway. Clothes and a toothbrush don't exactly take a long time to pack." She'd worked at the shop all day, meaning manned the register on the chance someone might walk in, and sent owls off to Ron and Harry about Draco. Some conflicts were best managed from the beginning; better to be proactive than reactive. Then, after dinner out – in muggle London of course – she and Draco had returned home.

They'd been playing "what have you done since the war" for two hours. So far she'd learned a lot about what plays he liked; who would have suspected Draco Malfoy would have season tickets to the Royal Shakespeare Company. She'd learned very little about the man himself, the complex, conflicted man who kept trying to apologize and who'd sat up with her after her nightmare. She'd told him a lot about the rare book business and nothing about the time she'd overheard Hannah Abbott wonder aloud at a party whether she was milking her post-war trauma for attention or how she'd never gone to a party since. It makes sense, she told herself, to keep this light and impersonal. If we're going to be friends, if he's going to live here, don't make every conversation therapy.

Apparently, however, she'd not been being tactful so much as biding her time, waiting until they'd both drunk enough that she could progress from the "in vino" to the "veritas." With no warning, she heard herself ask, "Why don't you just wear a glamour to hide your hair? Sure, everyone hates Draco Malfoy, erstwhile Death Eater, but no one would pull away when you passed if you just looked like an ordinary bloke. Are you vain or are you punishing yourself?"

So much, she thought for light and impersonal.

"Vain," he said. "And everyone doesn't hate me. You don't."

"Wrong answer," she said. "Don't lie to me."

"If you already think that you know the answer, why did you ask me the question?"

"Clever dodge, Draco Malfoy. You aren't even tipsy. How is that possible?" Hermione looked at the empty champagne bottle with some confusion.

"Learning to handle one's liquor was considered an important skill in the Malfoy household. You, however, are a lightweight."

"What else was considered a valuable skill to learn in the Malfoy household?" Hermione leaned on one hand. "Mowing the lawn? Making a good soufflé?"

"Hardly. Acquiring minions was good. Gathering potentially incriminating information on people was always smiled on. Knowing how to make blackmail sound like you were doing someone a favor, knowing what palms to grease, knowing whether bribery or blackmail would be more effective to get your way, those were the skills I learned at my father's knee."

"Sounds delightful. Why can't dark wizards just play under-8 football or something?" Hermione looked at her glass and then looked at the bottle.

"Oh no," said Draco. "You're starting to talk about muggle sports; I'm cutting you off." He slid her glass, still half full, away from her.

"Draco…"

"Uh oh."

"Why don't you hate me?" Hermione hated how sad she sounded, how vulnerable. "Not me, I mean. Well, yes, me. But muggles, all muggles. Why don't you hate muggles anymore? And muggle-borns? Or do you? No football for your little dark wizards." Then, to her utter mortification, she hiccupped.

He sighed. "You know I was raised to feel nothing but disdain for muggles, right? But you really only saw the most extreme part of the pure-blood philosophy. Most pure-bloods don't actually think muggles should be tortured and killed. We aren't all Voldemort; we aren't all my aunt." She flinched, but he continued on, relentlessly. "Most pure-bloods think of muggle-borns as, well, as defective children. One should be polite, one should take pity on their inherent limitations, but one should never ever let them encroach, never let them think they might be our equals."

"Don't invite them over for tea," whispered Hermione.

"Exactly. But you, oh, I hated you in school because you were so obviously not defective. I couldn't beat you at anything. Well, except for flying. But nothing important. You were smarter. You worked harder. You were kinder. You were braver. You were a constant, fucking reminder that I wasn't good enough. And, trust me, when I went home I heard about it. I was supposed to be the best, the scion of the oldest, most powerful pure-blood family. Oh, nobody struck me, unless you can actually beat a child with palpable disappointment. 'You shame us,' my father would say and then walk away. And I wanted his love and approval more than anything. More than I wanted to be a good person, more, even, than I hated you."

"I envied you in school," Hermione whispered, and Draco looked at her sharply, with disbelief.

"Why?"

"Because you were the center of a circle of friends. You were so socially at ease, everyone orbited around you. I was a stranger in a strange land. I'd been a socially awkward child even before I entered Hogwarts and once I was there it got worse. Even Ron and Harry hated me at first. Stuck up, know it all. I think Ron called me a "horror" after I tried to help him with a spell. Even now I'm more comfortable with books than people though I've learned to play the game."

"Oh, Hermione." They sat in silence so long Hermione reached out for her glass and he pushed it further away from her. "You'll thank me in the morning." Finally he started to speak again. "When I started to hide in the muggle world, to be able to have tea without being reviled, I had to learn how to get around in a totally new environment; I didn't even know how the money worked. And, Hermione, magic is amazing and wonderful and I'd never want to give it up but I was astounded by muggle art and muggle science. I'd been trying to tell myself that while Voldemort had been a violent, mad, extremist, the basic principles I'd been taught, that muggles were just inherently inferior and to be pitied, were still valid. But they weren't. You can't read Hamlet and think, 'Shakespeare was my inferior just because he couldn't use magic.' You can't look at quantum physics and think, 'The people who figured this out are only to be pitied for their flaws and defects.' And you, no one alive can deny that you're amazing. I may be a coward and a monster but I'm intellectually honest enough to acknowledge when I'm wrong, when everything I was taught about the world was wrong. I've spent the last few years sitting in my apartment and reading and trying to understand how I could have been so wrong about everything."

There was a long pause.

"I don't like football, though. It doesn't compare to quiddich."

Hermione was trying not to cry. She shouldn't have drunk so much. She shouldn't have asked him about this. But he wasn't done.

"You ask why I don't hide my hair? Why I don't prevent everyone who sees me in Wizard London from knowing exactly who I am? What do you want me to say, Hermione? You know why. Every time someone pulls away from me on the street, it's a confirmation that I'm a monster. It's penance. It's a reminder that I was the boy who stood there while you were tortured and did nothing. And your suffering wasn't the only unspeakable thing I witnessed, not at all. I may not have killed Dumbledore in the end, but I let the Death Eaters into the school. I was a coward and because of that people died. I deserve every glare, all the loathing. I earned it. If I atone for what I did this way, maybe I can bear the memories."

Hermione stood up, stumbled a little bit as she walked around the table. This, she thought, would never do. She grabbed his hand, pulled him upright. "Come on. I need a walk to clear my head. Take me for a walk, Draco."

"You want me to take you on a stroll through the streets of Wizarding London?"

"Yes." She smiled at him through a fringe of tears. "I want you, with your distinctive hair, to take me on a stroll on our lovely little lane in Wizarding London. Right now."

Draco helped her down the stairs. As they stood, or rather he stood and she swayed, in the bookstore, he handed her a sobriety potion and said, "Drink this, trust me. You're going to want your wits about you for this. I think you're mad, and I'd stop you if I thought I could, but if you must be a self-sacrificing hero, be a sober hero."

They walked out into the lane and headed down the street. As her head stopped spinning Hermione began to count how many people noticed Draco, how they tried to decide whether they wanted to shun the Death Eater or acknowledge the war heroine. It took 17 people before someone approached them. Fascinating, she thought. Usually she couldn't pick up the Daily Prophet without a dozen people waving to her at least, and almost as many wanting some kind of casual interaction just to say they'd talked to her.

"Hi Hermione. Fine night." The wizard looked nervous.

"Hi Andrew. It is, indeed, lovely. How's your mother?" Hermione smiled at him. If he had known her better he would have been very, very afraid; after the intensity of Draco's revelations she was looking for a place to throw all her anger and horror. The nervous wizard, foolishly, seemed reassured by the smile. Draco watched her, his arm linked through hers, wondering how this would play out. "Did she enjoy the Icelandic spell-book I found for her? Not a lot of call for Old Norse spell craft these days."

"She's good. Listen, Hermione. Are you OK? Is this guy bothering you? I could call an auror."

Hermione leaned into Draco and smiled up at him. If she had been any other witch he would have called this playacting 'simpering'; he wondered, not for the first time, whether his mother would like this woman. He was starting to realize how very much Narcissa and Hermione had in common, that the girl for whose torture he wanted so badly to atone had somehow moved him into her circle and, like his mother, would do anything to protect the people in that circle. Then Hermione smiled at this Andrew person and said, "I've not been this good in years. And no need to call an auror, goodness. I'm sure Draco could take care of anyone who bothered me. Couldn't you, Draco?"

"No one will harm a hair on your head while I am around," he said, in total seriousness. Hermione flicked a sudden, sharp glace at him. She'd heard the truth behind the social nicety. Interesting.

Andrew flushed and said, "It's just that…"

"It's just that what, Andrew? Surely you aren't implying I'm not capable of choosing my own companions?"

"No, no! But…"

Draco felt angry. Who was this little man to show up, pretending to care about Hermione's welfare? Where was he, where was anyone, when she woke in the night? Did he have any idea what she'd been through? What she'd endured so he could walk about the streets of London free of fear?

"Of course not. It was lovely to see you Andrew, and please be sure to send your mother my love, but, Draco, could you take us home now?" There was a world of sensual implication in her voice, which Andrew clearly noticed and at which he flinched. Draco found himself cursing inwardly that her teasing lilt was all part of this act, this gauntlet she was throwing down to wizarding London, and not actually real.

"Of course." He wrapped an arm around her waist and gently walked her in the direction of the bookstore and their flat.

Once inside Hermione stopped clinging to him like a limpet and began to laugh. "Well that takes care of that. Andrew's a terrible gossip and his mother's worse. Not to mention she doesn't actually read a word of Old Norse but had me find that book so she could come in every day for a week and stare at me as if I were a zoo exhibit. Between the two of them the whole street will know you live here by noon tomorrow."

"Hermione, why did you do that?"

She stood very close to him, and looked up at his perfect face with those sad grey eyes. "Because, if you are going to insist on suffering every time you go outdoors I'm going to walk by your side and share it. Because it's not right that people think they get to sit in judgment of you. Because maybe, just maybe, people will think that if I accept you then you can't be all bad." She smiled grimly. "I might as well use the war heroine thing for something other than a large flat."

They stood for a long time, not touching. Looking at each other. He reached out and very carefully tucked her hair behind one ear and then Hermione stepped away.

"I should probably get to bed."

"OK," he said. "Hermione…"

"Yes?"

"I hope you overcharged the old biddy for the book."

She smiled. "Oh, I did."

. . . . . . . . . . . .

**ArwenUndomiel16 ** _Thank you! I've got chapters 6-9 in some form of rough draft at this point so I hope to keep doing a chapter a day _

**HallowRain8587 **_ Thank you! I've been somewhat frustrated for a while with the idea that we aren't going to acknowledge, in the post-Hogwarts world, that these kids are going to end up pretty damaged. I don't think you can be a child soldier and walk back into "normal" life like nothing ever happened. _


	6. Chapter 6 - Nightmare 2

She started screaming at 3AM, begging Bellatrix to stop. Draco was expecting it this time and was there, arms around her, holding on. He murmured, "It's not real, it's a dream. It's OK. I'm right here," until he could tell by the way her body sagged against him that she'd fully woken up. They sat there, her wrapped in his arms, head buried into his shoulder until she muttered, "You don't need to come in here every night."

"Move over," he ordered and sat up next to the bedside table again and picked up the book. "Shall we find out whether the estimable Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth manage to figure out they are perfect for one another, or whether disaster ensues and she marries someone else. How will this riveting drama end?"

"The end up together," Hermione whispered. "It's why I like romance novels; they always have a happy ending. You can trust them."

"Really? Together, you say? I never would have guessed."

"Don't be a jerk, Malfoy."

He held the book in one hand and began to read aloud, stroking her hair with the other hand. Slowly she began to relax against him until he could tell she'd fallen asleep. He set the book down and stayed, stroking her hair, until the sky began to lighten. Then he slipped out, turning off the light behind him.

. . . . . . . . .

**Wow. Thank you all for all the reviews. This is so super short I'll try to give Chapter 7 another proof read so I can post it tonight.  
**

**Honoria Granger – **_Thank you. One of the side effects of having had my nose in a book most of my life, and having a brain that is flypaper for crap, is having a wealth of literary allusions floating around. I admit to being a bit embarrassed you found punctuation errors as I am one of those dreadful people who has opinions about the Oxford comma. _

**TheJesusFreak777 – **_Thank you! I should probably remember to include translations of Latin phrases, shouldn't I. :)_

**SlythCullen **_– Thank you so much. It has bothered me for a while that canon post-Hogwarts just ignores that there was a war, and soldiers, some of whom would have PTSD. Some of whom were children. And as I do love Hermione and Draco as a couple they seemed like a good place to explore that. _

**ArwenUndomiel16 – **_Thank you again! I'm brain dumping pretty quickly, and somewhat compulsively, so I think rapid updates will be the rule for at least the next week._

**MollyHooper22 – **_Thank you!_

**Duma **_– I think it's such a fine line for Draco. Of course he was a child and, at least in the muggle world, using child soldiers under 15 is itself a war crime and in practice we don't prosecute anyone under 18. On the other hand, if he didn't feel remorse he would be the monster he believes himself to be. _

**cuddlycannons **_– Together is such a weird concept here. I mean, they are living together, they're spending at least part of every night in the same bed, but thus far (and I've written out to chapter 9, and parts of 10 in some level of rough draft) they are still feeling their way awkwardly around the idea of friendship, much less the inevitable romance. (err, spoiler alert, I guess, but it's Dramoine, plus there's the Pride and Prejudice allusion, so…)_


	7. Chapter 7 - Letters

The next morning, over a light breakfast of tea, croissants, and champagne hangovers, the owls began to arrive. Harry's was first.

_. . . . . . . . . _

_Dearest H,_

_Draco Malfoy, huh? Ron owes me 5 galleons. Bring him to Ginny's thing next week. I love you,_

_~ Harry._

_P.S. He's not a house elf. Don't make him ugly knitted hats._

_P.P.S. I mean it, Hermione, from one person with a saving people thing to another. Don't try to save him if he doesn't want saving._

. . . . . . . . . .

Hermione laughed and slid the note across the table to Draco as she sent the owl on its way.

Draco read the note and felt a sudden surge of furious jealousy at the casual "Dearest", at the simple, "I love you." Why must Harry Potter always have everything?

"I should make you a hat to wear just to get him back for that SPEW comment," Hermione was saying.

"What?" Draco looked up, trying to set aside his raging, inappropriate emotions.

"A hat." Hermione looked at him. "Remember when I was knitting all the hats to try to set the Hogwarts house-elves free and terrorizing them in the process? Harry is never going to stop twitting me about that." There was a pause. "Draco." Another hesitation. "You will go with me to Ginny's annual summer thing, won't you? I know it's short notice and I haven't told you about it and I know you weren't friends but…" She stopped. To admit, 'but I don't want to be without you for even part of a day' was too clingy, too broken. She was supposed to be the strong one in this, awkward, new friendship. "It's fun; it's not really a party, it's just us, just the trio and their wives. There are a lot of kids; Ron and I both tend to leave after a few hours because it's just…"

"…too much?"

"Exactly. But the food is always good and…," she trailed off.

The moment was, mercifully, interrupted by next owl arriving.

. . . . . . . . .

'_Mione,_

_Fuck. Guess I owe Harry 5 galleons. Lavender says to say hi and to remind you that you'd promised Rose to bring some muggle book or other next week. She said you'd know what it was. _

_~ Ron._

_P.S. Tell the ferret if he hurts you I'll kill him._

. . . . . . . . . .

Draco just picked that one up as Hermione shooed the owl away; it ignored the attempts at shooing and hung around on the window ledge; Ron's owl was notorious for trying to snag extra treats. "Am I reading these right? Did Ron and Harry have a bet about us? Until recently, I hadn't even spoken to you in years." He decided to ignore the admonition not to save him and the unflattering comparison to a house elf. He didn't think he was just another salvage project but he was pretty sure Hermione intended to save him whether he wanted it or not. He wondered if he could return the favor. He wondered if she wanted him to.

"Apparently." Hermione looked awkward. "They've never approved of any of my, umm, male friends. Harry once mentioned you were probably the only person who wouldn't try to use me for, you know, the war heroine thing. But I had no idea they'd taken the idea so far."

"And I'm not here a day and I use you for the war heroine thing." Draco felt suddenly disgusted with himself. He was just one in a long line of losers trying to cash in on her influence. "Unless last night's little chat with scrawny-and-nervous doesn't count," he muttered.

"I think," said Hermione, in the primmest voice he'd ever heard her use, "That last night was my idea. I am far more difficult to use than you give me credit for. And you probably shouldn't call Andrew 'scrawny-and-nervous'."

"It's accurate."

"I'd think you'd like him; he's a pure-blood," she needled.

"In-breeding is often a problem in small reproductive communities. I assume you have good enough taste that he doesn't count among these previous 'male friends' of which you speak."

She looked at him, wondering what was going though his mind. Watching him read the notes, the simple notes that confirmed her best friends, her only friends, had accepted him despite their histories simply because she'd asked them to, because they loved her, she'd seen his face close off. For some reason he'd locked himself down and she didn't know why.

"I'm surprised Harry bet on me," was all he said.

"Harry believes pretty strongly that love is stronger than hate."

"Do you want me to go? Really?" Draco looked up at her.

"Of course I do." Pause. "Besides, now that they've invited you so it would be rude not to go."

"Don't try to out maneuver me with some dodge about etiquette. I've been watching master-manipulators at work since before I could talk. Just…. do you want me there? Because if you want me there I'll put up with noble Harry Potter and however many spawn the Weasels have popped out."

"Yes. I want you there, but not if you don't want to go. I never stay long." Her words came out in a rush. "It's not really a party, it's just old friends having a summer picnic. It's not a big deal…"

Liar, he thought. This is very much a big deal and you know it. "So," he drawled, "how many of your other 'male friends' have gone to this not-a-big-deal not-really-a-party with the two other biggest war heroes in the nation?"

"None."

That shut him up. That scared him. He heard his mother's voice in his head, 'When you are invited to a party you should promptly send a gracious response.' When emotions are too confusing to sort out, fall back on etiquette, another Malfoy childhood tip.

"I'd love to go to this party-that-isn't-a-party with you."

"Good." Hermione looked past his head, not meeting his eyes. "I'll owl Harry to expect us. And I'll go find that book for Rose."

At that moment a third owl arrived. Hermione read the note, gasped, turned bright red, and shoved it into her pocket. She waved at the owl so viciously it took off. Draco raised an eyebrow. "No." she said. "This one I'm keeping private." She went back into her room.

Ron's owl was still on the ledge, hooting. Draco looked at it for a moment, wrote a quick note, tied it on the bird's leg and held out three more owl treats. The bird glared at him so he passed out first a fourth, than a fifth. Finally satisfied, the owl took off, bearing the note with it.

_. . . . . . . . . ._

_Ron -_

_If I hurt her, I'll let you._

_the ferret_

. . . . . . . . . .

Draco watched it fly away.

.

.

.

.

.

.. . . . . . . . . .

**Honoria Granger – **_How can you reject the Oxford comma! And thank you again for the sweet reviews. You are really really kind. I know chapter 6 was short; the nightmare chapters are just structurally not that long.  
_

**TheJesusFreak777 – **_Thank you for all your kind words! The thing about Ron and Harry, of course, is that we are only seeing them through Hermione's eyes and they may not be quite as broken as she thinks they are. I mean, they are both happily married, with kids, while she's been living above a shop, only spending time with books and her therapist. Just because they accept how wounded she is and just because they hate Ministry awards ceremonies doesn't mean they, themselves, are really all that non-functional anymore. _


	8. Chapter 8 - Tea with Narcissa 1

"We made the afternoon edition of the Prophet." Hermione tossed the paper to Draco.

He reached out to his left and caught it. "You have terrible aim." He looked at the paper. "First page, but below the fold. You're slipping."

"They don't have a photo," she shrugged.

"'The notorious Draco Malfoy has reportedly moved in with war heroine Hermione Granger. Could the beloved Gryffindor princess be under the imperius?'" He looked at her. "The think I've _imperiused_ you. That's insulting!" He paused. "Aren't you insulted?"

"She's laying the groundwork for something else she wants. I should floo her."

"I'm not giving an interview to Rita Skeeter."

"Mmm hmmm." Hermione squinted at him. "How about a photo-op?"

. . . . . . . . . .

Draco walked around the Manor to the tea garden in the back. Narcissa hadn't left the grounds since the war but she took the paper and she had a copy with her.

"Mother," he kissed her cheek.

"Draco." She smiled at him, the only child she'd been able to carry to term, this brilliant, beloved child, grown into a man before her eyes. She gestured to a chair and said, "Please, darling, be seated. Mopsy will bring us some tea."

She saw him look the Daily Prophet on the table, at her perfectly manicured hand resting on the brief gossip item about him.

"I assume, of course, that you haven't actually imperiused the girl."

"Don't be insulting."

"What's she like?" She watched his eyes flick to her face in sudden shock. Oh, her poor boy. How to tell him she wanted him to be happy and at peace in a way he'd believe?

He took a deep breath. "She's maddening. She's brilliant and angry and cunning and brave and loyal; she marched me into the street and hung on me like a pure-blood on the hunt for a good marriage and virtually dared her neighbors to object to my presence."

"It looks like one of them did."

"A former suitor, I think, and his mother, who is apparently a harpy. Since her little stunt I've actually had people smile at me in the street outside her shop. I bought some croissants for the two of us for breakfast this morning and the baker didn't refuse to sell them to me. It's better. She's made it better. I didn't think I could bear for it to be better but I can."

Narcissa studied his face. The tension around his mouth had relaxed. He no longer looked like he was holding himself very carefully lest he break or explode.

Mopsy brought the tea, quickly and unobtrusively. Narcissa smiled at the elf and Mopsy looked like she might expire from happiness. Would, she thought, that I could make Draco happy with just a smile, would that he would allow me to help him. But all she said was, "Tell me more."

"She has exquisite taste in décor, I think you'd like her flat. She needs a new hairdresser; her hair is a disaster but whenever I tuck strands of it back my breath catches in my throat. She can't throw. Whenever she's being manipulative she gets a glint in her eye; she would have been eaten alive in Slytherin because of that tell." He paused and Narcissa waited for him to get to the blood purity issue she knew he was dancing around, sipping at her tea.

"She's a muggle born."

Narcissa made a little moue with her mouth and gave a delicate shrug. Then she set her teacup down.

"Draco." He looked at her. "I loved your father very much and I miss him every day. That does not mean I did not know he was a monster. There were many things about which he and I disagreed, for all that we presented a unified front to society. Please do not assume I am as zealous as he was on the issue of blood purity."

"But…."

"Draco, I lied to the Dark Lord to protect you. I would do anything for you. Anything at all, if you would just let me. I think I like this girl, who is also so protective of you she doesn't let you stop her, even with her bad hair. Bad hair I can fix. Loyalty is harder to arrange." She looked at him fondly but with some exasperation. Trust Draco to come in, tell her he'd fallen in love with the nation's war heroine, that he was loved in return, to show her he wasn't, for the first time in years, balancing on the brink of self-destruction, and still be worried she'd be fussed about blood purity. Sometimes she wished she could go back in time and slap Lucius, as much as she'd loved the man. If, after all this time, Draco had found peace with an American muggle who put ketchup on everything, she would have found a way to accept it; Hermione Granger was not a problem. Compared to what she'd been willing to accept when Draco had been tomcatting around muggle London, Miss Granger was a gift.

She wondered, briefly, if Draco even knew he loved this Granger girl yet. "I have a little present for her." She waved her hand at a bag by the table. "A manuscript from our library. I believe she runs a rare bookshop, yes? I thought she might like this and goodness knows our library is running out of room."

Draco frowned. "She's committed us to attending the Ministry Charity Ball. For a photo op."

"Well," Narcissa patted her mouth with her napkin. "You did say she was cunning."

"Mother…"

"Yes, dear?" said Narcissa.

"I shouldn't underestimate you."

"No," she smiled. "You really shouldn't. Ask Miss Granger if she'd like the name of my hairdresser. He makes house calls. You should both look good for the Ball."

. . . . . . . . . .

"She gave me a book?" Hermione held the bag in her hand, frowning.

"She called it a manuscript."

"Why did your mother send me a manuscript? Is it cursed?"

Draco sighed. "I doubt it. She said she liked you."

Hermione began to carefully unwrap the book. He watched her hands, watched them take the book out of it's wrapping, set it carefully on the desk at the edge of the room that had a reading lamp and carefully open it from the edge of the thick, brown binding. The book just looked like most of the tedious, ancient books in the Malfoy library with thick paper and written in a language he didn't read – and he read several – so he didn't understand her quick intake of breath, or why she pulled a pair of cotton gloves out of the top drawer and put them on before she began to slowly turn the pages. "Draco." She stopped and looked at him. "Do you have any idea how valuable this is?"

"No."

"This is, if the first few pages are telling, a spell book from before the Norman Conquest. This is probably the only extant copy of this manuscript and it's at least 900 years old. WHY did your mother give this to me?"

Draco thought back to the dismissive way his mother had passed along the book. The library was full, she'd claimed. A little present for the girl who'd helped her son. "I think," he said slowly, "I might have made the mistake of underestimating her. Again. That's twice in one day. Not good."

"What do you mean?"

"That book means something. Knowing my mother it means three or four things. It means she is grateful to you for your little stunt that publicly lent me your support, even if it landed me in the Daily Prophet, but it also means she's known about you for a while, long enough to have gone into the library and found the book most likely to interest you. She probably knew the first night I went to sit in that pub and stare at your shop. It probably means she doesn't care about blood status, at least in your case, because you don't give real gifts to muggle-borns. It might also mean she's testing you to see if you know that. When you write her a thank you note don't sound too excited. 'Dear Mrs. Malfoy, Thank you for the lovely manuscript. So kind of you to think of me.' Something like that. Don't admit you gasped when you saw it. Don't gush."

He paused.

"It might also mean she's going to invite you to tea."

"I thought you didn't have muggle-borns over to tea."

"She told me she didn't care about blood purity as strongly as my father did. I didn't really listen because almost no one cares about blood purity as much as Lucius did, but I think that was a warning. Combined with the book, I'm sure of it. She's going to treat you as if you were a pureblood. Shit!" Draco exploded.

"I beg your pardon."

"Pure-blood social customs are a fucking nightmare."

"I spent every summer with the Weasleys all through school. It didn't seem that bad to me."

"The Weasleys are blood traitors. Oh, don't flinch like that." Draco shot her an annoyed look as she recoiled at the phrase. "It doesn't just mean they marry out, though I noticed your Ron married a pure-blood. It means they've walked away from the complicated social hierarchy." He paused. "Sensible of them, really, given how low they were on it."

"I am really not following you here." Hermione was stripping off the gloves and putting them next to the manuscript.

"You like romance novels. Ever read any set in the muggle peerage during the Regency period."

"Of course."

"Well, pure-blood social customs make those social strictures look like a preschool classroom during free play. It's a nightmare. A fucking nightmare." Draco started to pace. "We're trained from childhood how to navigate that world. Whom to acknowledge. What level of courtesy to grant everyone. No one speaks in anything but circles and you have to know how to understand all the layers of what they are saying. Not that any of them will talk to me these days, which, frankly, has been a relief."

"Still not quite following why this is an issue."

"She's going to treat you like a pure-blood." He looked at her, willing her to understand.

"But I'm not." Hermione said calmly.

"If Narcissa Malfoy née Black says you are a pure-blood, you just might be. She still has a lot of social capital, for all that she never leaves that estate. She could foist you on pure-blood society and make them accept you, make it such a social solecism to suggest your muggle birth is anything other than a charming eccentricity that, well, all that whispering at the Ministry behind closed doors about the handicap of your birth would stop. Totally. Among so many other things I can't even list them all." 

Hermione looked at him, patiently, but in utter disbelief. "If she has so much social power why didn't she rehabilitate you?"

Draco ran his hands through his hair. "Because I told her not to."

"WHAT?" Hermione looked like she might throttle him. "You let me parade you through the streets while I clung to you after turning your mother's offer of social rehabilitation down? I feel like an idiot."

"I've told you, pretty clearly, that the only way I can live with myself is this penance and, besides, I knew I couldn't stop you. At least I made sure you were sober while you did it. Don't get me off track." He took a deep breath. "She's going to invite you to tea. Fuck."

"I am not going to that Manor."

"I know, and she never leaves it. She hasn't since the War. This, Hermione, is a problem." He paused. "There is a townhouse." Hermione stared at him in fascination. He was yanking on his hair, literally pulling some of it out. "If she insists I'll remind her of that. She can have that opened. No one tortured you in the townhouse so it should be OK, right?"

She looked at him. "Draco, calm down. I'll have tea with your mother in this townhouse, assuming she invites me, I'll thank her for the book. I'm glad she's not going to give you a hard time about my blood-status. But I'm not going to let her turn me into some kind of weird pseudo pure-blood so whatever insane social hierarchy issues you are worrying about simply don't apply."

"If you have tea with her, she's announcing to all her cohort that she considers you a pure-blood for all practical purposes."

"That's nice. Still irrelevant to my life."

Draco just sighed, "We'll see." There was a pause. "She also offered to give you her hairdresser's name for this Ball we seem to be going to. He makes house-calls."

"How thoughtful. I'll thank her for that as well."

I'll bet, Draco thought, that he only makes house calls for pure-bloods. My mother is spinning some kind of complicated web and I wish I knew why. But all he said was, "I can't believe you committed us to that Ball to get a photo-op for Rita-fucking-Skeeter."

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**Honoria Granger – **_The Oxford comma is a thing of beauty and clarity. I do have to admit, if I'm being totally honest, however, that I sometimes leave it out because it seems redundant. My formal English education was ant-Oxford comma but I picked it up as an adult because, sometimes, you just need the extra clarity. Then I grew to like it. And thank you again for the lovely reviews!_

**MollyHooper22 **- _Thank you so much!_

**HallowRain8587 ** - _Thank you! I confess I do have two smut chapters pre-written, without even a clear idea exactly where the second one should go, as it turns out writing sex scenes is significantly easier than getting that first kiss to flow naturally. Who knew?_

**ArwenUndomiel16** – _Thank you!_


	9. Chapter 9 - Nightmare 3

The begging is what wakes her, loud pleas to just stop, please don't kill her, please please please. Draco is screaming, crying, begging someone to stop and she's racing, wand in hand, to her guest room, to his room, and he's still screaming and she is there, lights on, and hurling herself onto the bed and he's grabbing her, pulling her to the side, getting her away from whatever threat he is seeing, and she knows he's still trapped in his head.

"It's OK," she insists. "It was a dream. It wasn't real. I'm here. It's OK." She feels him shudder and then he's awake and immediately totally still, self-control reasserted. "It's OK," she says, again. "It's OK."

He's breathing, his face bent over the top of his head, arms still wrapped around her from when he'd grabbed her moments before. He's holding so tightly she can't even get her own arms up and around him so she just rests her forehead against his chest. "Well," he says, his voice bitter, "Now you know you aren't the only one who wakes screaming."

"It's OK," she says again, helplessly.

"No. It's not." His body is held so tightly, a coiled spring, that she wonders, suddenly, how he usually releases all that energy.

"Does it ever get better?" he mutters into her hair. "Do you ever stop seeing it?"

"I don't know. I think so. You make it better for me."

"I'm so tired of this." He is so quiet she isn't sure she was supposed to hear him. She pushes herself back, forces him to release her, and pushes his hair away from his face. "It's OK," she says. "I'm right here." She studies him, his face is tight, his eyes are narrowed and glinting with fear, or maybe anger, and he's breathing in a controlled way she recognizes, the way you breathe when you are trying not to hyperventilate. Then she shoves him over to the side. He glares at her.

"What are you doing?"

"Getting comfortable. You've messed up the bed."

"It _is_ my bed." The tension are totally gone from his voice, the familiar biting mockery is back, and she knows she's got him back from the edge, that staying here is the right choice.

"Well," she says, "Since we both know I'm only going to have a nightmare of my own before long, it would be more efficient if I were already here. That way, when it's your turn to tell me it's OK you won't risk tripping or bumping your toe as you go into my room." She snuggles down into the bed, pulls him down, presses against his side and inhales, breathes in the smell she's come to associate with him, overlaid with the cold fear sweat from the nightmare. He sighs, a much put upon sound, and says, "Well, if you must." But she can feel him slowly relax against her as he winds his arms around her again, less tightly this time.

"You're a good man, Draco," she murmurs.

They lay in bed, and she listens to him breathe. She's almost asleep when she finally hears him whisper, "I wish I believed you."

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Sleeping against Draco, she doesn't have a nightmare for the first time since he's moved in. She isn't braced against one for the first time in years.

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He's gone from the bed when she wakes, already up at the table, drinking tea, a muggle paper open in front of him. He narrows his eyes when she comes out of his room, as she stands, awkwardly, in his doorway. It seems to her another line has been crossed, another step towards something unknowable and she's not sure whether he's going to be unhappy about that. But all he says is, "I got more croissants" and she nods and heads back to her own room to clean up, get dressed, and join him for breakfast.

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**A/N**

I've changed the verbal tense to the historical present. I should go back and edit the earlier chapters but I'm pretty focused on brain dumping this beast out onto paper. Ah,

the problems of publishing before you've written the whole story. Also, I realize this is short but such is the nature of the nightmare chapters. Chapter 10 needs another proof-read before I launch it, especially with my decision to change the verbal tense, but it should be good to go sometime today.

**Lioness2012** – _Thank you so much!_

**stephr** – _Thank you! The allure of the damaged bad boy is strong, isn't it? Especially the damaged, gorgeous bad boy…._


	10. Chapter 10 - The Theatre & Its Aftermath

"I have tickets to Macbeth."

Hermione looks up from the account books at the register. Draco was leaning against the end of the bookshelf with the books on cursed plants.

"Be careful, some of those books bite."

He laughs.

"I'm not kidding."

He straightens up and moves, ever so slightly, away from the shelves. "Do you want to go?"

"To what?"

"Macbeth. Tonight at the RSC. You know, "_Double, double, toil and trouble_…?"

"You mean the one about the crazed, power-hungry lord who rises to power on the strength of his belief in a magical prophecy and then gets killed by a rival whose mother's death marked him as capable of overcoming the tyrant? That play?*"

"Well, when you put it like that…"

Hermione laughs. "I'd love to. Do you plan to feed me first, too?"

"You want me to cook?" Draco raises an eyebrow at her.

"I suspect your talents are better suited to making a reservation."

"True enough. There's a nice little Italian place in Stratford-on-Avon. If you're willing to close up shop early we could apparate in and eat there before the show. You'd have to be willing to be seen in muggle clothes at the apparation point in Stratford, though."

Hermione shrugs. "Doesn't bother me." She closes her account book, flips the sign in the shop window from 'Open.'

"I'm going to go get ready."

"For two hours? It's going to take you two hours to get dressed?" Draco considers the insanity of all women and rolls his eyes. "Well, I suppose it does take a long time to tame that hair of yours into some semblance of not being a rat's nest."

Hermione walks past him on her way towards the stairs, brushes her fingers over his lips and said, "Don't be a prat, Malfoy. I can hex your mouth closed if you aren't nice."

He stands and watches her go, and then puts his fingers where hers had been.

. . . . . . . . . .

They apparate back into the flat after midnight, and collapse onto the couch.

"Next time," mutters Hermione, "Can we go to a comedy?"

"Yes." Draco stares at his hands. Macbeth had been a really bad idea. Stopping at a pub afterwards had been a worse one. His self-control, already wavering after almost three hours in a theatre contemplating the potent mixture of evil and ambition, has almost totally fallen apart with the addition of a pint. "_'Out damned spot'_."

"Your hands are not drenched in blood, Draco."

He looks, rather bleakly, at her. "So you say."

Hermione shakes her head, reaching behind her to let her hair out of a twist. "To get these things tight enough to not fall down, they always hurt."

"Let me." He puts his hands on her shoulders and turns her, placing her back towards him, and begins pulling pins out of her hair. He's making a caress out of slowly unwinding it, releasing it down her back. He runs his fingers through it, careful not to get his fingers snagged as he spreads it out.

"Mmm. You've done that before."

"I've not been a monk for the past seven years, no." She stiffens under his touch even as he begins to plait her hair. "Did you think I had? Really? There are a lot of women in London who have no idea that Draco Malfoy is a war criminal. It's only in the wizarding world that I'm anathema." He begins to trace the lines of her shoulders with his fingertips. "Nor have you been completely celibate, I think, my dear, if your reference to 'male friends' is any indication." He twists around her to look at her face. "Are you blushing? Is Hermione Granger blushing to admit she's done gone out and fucked various men over the years?" He laughs, low in his throat, as she continues to sit, back to him, very close, very stiffly. "Relax, Hermione. I'm not going to try to seduce you." Although, he thinks to himself, it would be so very, very easy to do right now. "After all, no one wants to risk rejection where scrawny-and-nervous has been accepted."

"I never dated Andrew."

"Really?" He traces circles over her shoulder blades, laughing at her rigidity. "He reeked of former suitor to me."

"Rejected suitor, maybe."

"So you toyed with him?"

"Stop."

He laughs again, though his fingers never stop drawing circles. "I'm tainted beyond belief, forced to date muggles, and the fair maiden tells me to stop because I'm jealous of her assorted pure-blood suitors."

"I thought we'd just established, rather unpleasantly crudely, that I'm no maiden. And is that what you are? Jealous?"

He leans forward and whispers in her ear, "Madly."

She twists her body away from him and grabs his hands, staring at the palms.

"Looking for the blood?"

"Macbeth has put you into an ugly mood."

"You have no idea." He waits for her to drop his hands, to be sensible, to walk away from him. He wants to get raging drunk. He wants to hit something. He wants to grab her and kiss her until she can barely breathe, until he's driven every 'male friend' from her memory, erased that fucking Harry Potter's easy 'dearests'.

Instead of backing down she says, "Show me the Mark."

It's as if she's slapped him and he drops her hands, unbuttons his sleeve and silently rolls the fabric up, holds his arm out to her. 'Look at it,' he dares her silently, furiously. 'Look at it and see how unsalvageable I am, branded with this. Look at it and know, really know, what I was.'

She looks first at his eyes, steadily, than down at the Mark. She does nothing for a minute, maybe two, then begins to trace it with her fingers, much as he'd run his fingers across her back, the light touch a torment, following the looping lines of the snake and the skull. He sits still, tense, afraid to move. He know she's seen the mark before but, until now, she's allowed her eyes to slide over it, never confronted him with it. And now, this. She suddenly rubs it, hard, with the heel of her hand, and then bends over and kisses it. He jerks his arm, and then forces himself to hold still again.

"I hate it," he says hoarsely.

She shoves up the sleeve of her jumper and holds her arm next to his, the word his aunt had carved in her arm still visible, comparing them.

"We're the light and the dark, aren't we? Funny that I'm the fair one. '_Fair is foul, and foul is fair_'**."

"No," she insists, her voice low and serious. "We are the same. They are the same. The same, Draco."

But he shakes his head.

She leans back against his chest and he pulls his sleeve back down. The silence stretches out. "What I hate most about Macbeth," she says, conversationally, after a long pause, as though she hadn't just scraped at his worst scars, as if he hadn't just played vicious words games with her, "is the idea of pre-ordination. The weird sisters. Wyrd*** sisters. It suggests that Macbeth had no real choice in becoming a tyrant, that he was doomed to violence. It's not the stand Shakespeare takes in Caesar."

"'The fault, dear Brutus?'" **** Draco is trying to get his equilibrium back, to force away the violent self-loathing Macbeth has raised in him, the tyrant's branded slave. The tyrant's failed, branded, slave.

"Exactly. We've lived enough of our lives bound to a prophecy. I hate to think we are all just playthings in the hands of fate forever. I want to live in a world where our choices determine our outcomes, not that our brief lives unspool predetermined entertainment for the gods." Hermione has leaned back against his chest, feigning relaxation and idly running her fingers against his knee. Draco is not wholly sure whether she is deliberately punishing him for his earlier verbal cruelty or whether she has no idea what her idle touch is doing to him. He's starting to reconsider the idea of seduction; he knows from endless experience that a hard, fast fuck will bring him back from this edge.

"But Macbeth makes the choice to believe the witches," is all he says, the brutal self-control he's using to push down his feelings making his tone distant, cold

"Voldemort made the choice to believe the prophecy was his fate."

"And Oedipus tried to avoid the prophecy that was his."

"I know," Hermione sighs. "And therein made it come true."

"We aren't going to solve the question of free will versus predestination tonight, you know," he says.

"But we can live," she says, "as though we have free will. You don't have to chain yourself to your past; the sins of the fathers are NOT visited onto the sons." She twists to face him and suddenly he is face to face with her, staring at her mouth, her perfect, beautiful mouth, forgiving him yet again, pushing him yet again to forgive himself.

He places his hands on each side of her face and slowly lowers his mouth to hers. They stay there for a brief moment then both recoil back.

"Oh gods," he says, "I'm so…"

"Don't you DARE apologize. Don't you dare." But Hermione is backing away towards her room. "I should go to sleep anyway. It's late and I want to work on that manuscript your mother gave me tomorrow."

"Of course," Draco murmurs. Then, as she is at her door he says, "Hermione."

She pauses.

"You looked really beautiful tonight."

"Thank you." And she's gone and he's alone with his dangerous mood, his self-loathing, and an erection that might kill him before morning.

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* A bit of a gross over-simplification of the plot of Macbeth, and I'm cheating a bit with the parallel as Voldemort/Riddle is presented as bad from the start, possibly a sociopath, and Macbeth is tempted into overreaching ambition by three witches who just might be the Fates. Of course, we are also led to believe that Voldemort/Riddle is doomed to his own path because of his lineage, those pesky sins of the fathers, so, perhaps, he is as much a plaything of the Fates as Macbeth.

** Macbeth. Act I sc. i.

*** The witches in Macbeth are regularly referred to in the text as "the weird sisters"; Wyrd is the Old English word for fate and a common interpretation of their characters is that they are the three fates.

**** "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,  
But in ourselves" Julius Caesar (I, ii, 140-141)

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**TheJesusFreak777** _– Thank you again for your reviews! I so look forward to them!_

**Honoria Granger** – _I've always sort of loved Narcissa. She's so fiercely dedicated to her family and yet such an utter bitch to everyone else. I decided that she'd do anything to ensure Draco's emotional well being, even turning her back on a lifetime of prejudice, though it surely helps that the woman she has to confront those beliefs over is "exceptional." I'm not sure she'd be so understanding, really, if Draco brought home an American muggle with a fondness for ketchup. _

**Siren34** – _Thank you! I've got the party written, and in proof-reading stage. The tea is in my head, taking shape. The ball is, I admit, just the barest sketch at this point._


	11. Chapter 11 - Reading

He sits on the couch, book in hand, and watches her work at the manuscript; by mutual, unspoken agreement neither of them has mentioned the previous night, not his vicious mood, not the kiss. If she'd had a nightmare she'd hidden it behind a silencing charm and he'd lain in bed for hours, half-asleep, letting his mood ebb, waiting, wanting, to be needed.

When he'd gotten up, she'd already been gone, kettle left on warm and a note under a bag from the bakery.

_D – Went out to get more books. Need at least a dictionary and a better grammar to tackle the manuscript. Much Ado is opening at the Globe next month; maybe we should try that? Be back in a bit. ~ H_

_P.S. – The woman at the patisserie claimed there were no more croissants until I told her they were for you. I guess if I want fresh bread in this neighborhood I need to stay on your good side._

He'd slipped the note into a book, and now he sits, watching her at her work.

She turns a page very carefully, touching only the edge of the sheet with her gloved hands. As she had done with the previous pages, she first takes a muggle photograph of the page and then begins to laboriously copy all the text. She seems to shake a cramp from her hand several times and finally she puts the pencil down, stretches, and stands up.

"I think," she says, "I have had enough 'angnere efetan*' for now. My brain is full."

"Angnere what?"

"Eye of newt."

"I didn't realize you knew Old English."

"I don't, not really. That's why this is so hard, why I needed more reference books to even make an attempt. But so few witches or wizards do and I don't want to try to explain that text to a muggle researcher. Plus, if anyone who knew anything got their hands on it, they'd whisk it away to a climate-controlled library. Which is, I admit, where it belongs. But I want to copy out the whole text, then translate it. Maybe publish it in an edition with a facing page translation for witches who are interested in the old spell knowledge." She settles next to him on the couch and leans her head on his shoulder. I need a break, though. Brain full. Read to me."

"This may not be the best book for a woman whose brain is 'full'".

"I don't care. I just want to hear your voice."

"Oh, well, in that case, complex philosophy you can't follow with your full brain it is." He returns to his book. "_'Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does._'*"

They sit there and he reads, his voice steady in the darkening room, her head on his shoulder, her eyes closed. He thinks about responsibility. He wonders whether she's right, whether he's truly not culpable for things he did as a child under a madman's rule. If he lets go of the self-loathing for the things he did, the things he witnessed and didn't stop, does it mean he's stopped atoning? Is he allowed to ever stop atoning?

Eventually, when the light from the lamp has become the only illumination and the windows are fully dark, he hears her voice, very small, very quiet.

"I used to wish it hadn't happened," she says. "I'd wish someone had just pushed Tom Riddle off a cliff when he was ten and that everything had been normal. No philosopher's stone, no rigged Tri-Wizard Tournament, no horcruxes, no war, no Bellatrix, no nightmares. Now? I don't know."

She turns to him and drew her thumb along his eyebrows, down his jaw, along his lip, studying his face as she'd studied her manuscript, looking for the secrets he kept. Draco looks at her, locked down, in total control of his expression, which he's kept carefully blank.

"I hate to feel that way. It seems so disrespectful to the dead and to the suffering to think, 'oh, well, maybe I'm glad it all happened, after all.' But this man, reading Sartre me? This brilliant, cutting man who surprises me every day? The war, and the time since, the time you've spent willfully outcast, hiding in the muggle world, made you into this man. Draco, you're amazing."

"I wish you'd had an easier path to get here. I wish you didn't still hate yourself. But I think I might l…," and she pauses and he inhales sharply, "I think I really like the man you are now. I can't wish away what led to you being here with me."

He reaches his hand to her face and, very slowly, traces her features. "I don't know what I did to deserve you. I can barely bring myself to think I even deserve your forgiveness, much less this, whatever this is. You're deluding yourself if you think I'm a good man, that you should give this to me. But I'm going to take it, gods forgive me but I am going to take it. You must be a fool, Hermione Granger, for letting me in."

Slowly, afraid she'll back away again, he kisses her again. This time she leans towards him, almost lying across him on the couch, and he slowly explores her mouth. Then, in one smooth movement, he wraps his arms around her and shifts her so she is underneath him. He brushes her hair away from her face and looks at her. "You'll have to throw me out, Hermione Granger. Out of your flat, out of your life." He kisses her collarbone. He kisses her neck. He traces his tongue along the edge of her jaw and hears her hissed intake of breath. "But," he says, pulling back. "I think, especially after last night, that we should do this slowly."

She exhales slowly, nods and struggles to sit up, then leans back against him and twines her fingers through his.

"Draco," He's going to have to convince this woman of the value of silence. "I'm sorry I didn't try to help you that awful year. I knew something was wrong, I could tell you looked ill. I should have said something, tried to help. Maybe things would have been different."

He snorts. Elegant Draco Malfoy actually snorts and it breaks the mood and she looks shocked. "You need to stop thinking every problem in the world is yours to fix, that you are somehow responsible for every single thing that goes wrong for anyone. You aren't."

"What?"

"Gods, Granger, I appreciate the sentiment, I do, but how absurdly arrogant can you be? Do you really think I would have listened to you. 'Oh, well, Voldemort lives in my house and is threatening to kill me, and my parents, and I haven't listened to Dumbledore or Snape but now that little Hermione Granger's worried about me maybe I'll reconsider my choices.'" He laughs harshly.

"You can kind of be a jerk."

"You can kind of be an idiot." He waits for her to pull her hand away from his but she doesn't, she holds on tightly and so he continues. "I hated you, Hermione. Hated. Not disliked. Not 'was mean to you because I secretly liked you.' I hated you. No concerned, girlish inquiry from you was going to get through to me. Some people listen to advice. Some of us, apparently, need to actually see death and torture before we realize we should have run into one of Dumbledore's little safe houses when we had the chance. Please don't rewrite history in your head to transform me into a misunderstood good boy. I wasn't. I wasn't a good boy. I'm not a good man." He shoves up his sleeve, forces her to look at the Mark again. "This is who I was. This!" She's crying now and he hates himself but thinks he might just hate her a little bit too and he waits for her to kick him out.

But she doesn't. Instead she says, through the bitter tears, "But it's not who you are now."

He's shocked into speechlessness. Into hope.

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* "Angnere efetan, & ta paddan / Wull hreaðemýs, & tunge docgan" (_Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog_, Macbeth (IV, i, 14-15)) On the off chance you, like Draco, are unfamiliar with Old English, I used the wonders of tools on the internet to translate the famous charm to give you an idea what Hermione is dealing with in her manuscript. I apologize to anyone who knows OE.

* Sartre, Being and Nothingness.

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**A/N – **I should have Ch. 12 ready shortly, and 13, the party, up tonight. After so much hand wringing 13 is, at last, a happy chapter.

**ArwenUndomiel16 – **First kisses, done. :) More is coming, but they are being very difficult about this. Draco's being a tad over-cautious.

**Siren34 **– Thank you :) I should have the party up tonight!


	12. Chapter 12 - Nightmare 4

The dream that night is a bad one. She knows it's coming, a wave you can see, far in the distant sea, rolling closer and closer and then the water closes in over her head and she can't see and she can't breathe and she's drowning and all she can hear is the madwoman yelling "crucio" and there's blood on her hands and she looks down and the Mark is on her arm, she's been marked and she's screaming and screaming. "I didn't take it, I didn't take it," she cries, and she's not even sure if she's talking about the cup or the mark. And then she's in his arms and she's sobbing but she's safe. Safe. Safe. Oh gods, what has the world become when Draco Malfoy is her safety.

She doesn't open her eyes for a long time, just feels his arms around her, feels his hair brushing against her as he bends over her. The sobs slow, and stop. She comes to the awareness that she is, again, a sight. Sniffling. Hiccupping. No wonder no one will stay with her for long. "I'm sorry," she whispers.

"You apologize for all the wrong things," he says, clearly annoyed, and hands her a handkerchief.

"What should I apologize for?"

"Right now? Nothing. Gods. What am I going to do with you?"

"Keep me?" she asks, in a tiny voice, and Draco sighs, leans over her and pulls her hair back from her face and, holding it back with one hand, uses the other to tip her chin up; he begins, tentatively, then with more assurance to kiss her and she parts her lips and lets him in. The kiss starts off slowly and then his hands are on each side of her face and he's pulling her to him and roughly exploring her mouth with his thrusting tongue and she's pushing back against him and her hands are in his hair and they're gasping for air even as they try to consume one another. Then he slows, and is gently kissing the side of her mouth again, and along her jaw, and he whispers, "I told you, you'll have to throw me out, Hermione Granger." He pauses. He pulls back and looks at her. "Now, scoot over."

She does, and he pulls the book off the nightstand and opens it again as she lies down, pressed up against his side. "We return, I see, to the scintillating world of Mr. Darcy. I'm going to have to get you some different books, Hermione.

"'_She certainly did not hate him. No; hatred had vanished long ago, and she had almost as long been ashamed of ever feeling a dislike against him, that could be so called. The respect created by the conviction of his valuable qualities, though at first unwillingly admitted, had for some time ceased to be repugnant to her feelings…'"_

He reads and she lays in the bed, listening to his voice rather than the words, wondering how he had become her safety when she had meant to be his. Wondering, under all his self-loathing, under his cutting edge, what kind of man he really is, what he'll be when she's done unwrapping him. What she'll be.

"Draco," says, after a while.

He immediately puts the book down and turns to her.

"Don't leave, OK?" Her voice is so soft she's not sure he can hear her.

But he must because he says, "I won't." And he's there when she wakes, his fingers tangled in her hair, breathing steadily against her neck.


	13. Chapter 13 - The Party

They apparate in and Draco's never felt so tense about a party, and that's saying quite a lot. This is it, he thinks. "Hail Caesar," he mutters. "We who are about to die salute you."

She sounds impatient. "I'm not throwing you to the lions."

"Matter of perspective." And he leans down, "Kiss me; at least I'll die happy," and Hermione looks at him and, thank gods, just reaches up towards him and, briefly, everything is OK until he hears Potter saying, "I think I might be sick," and his Hermione is racing towards the git, arms around him, laughing, and he, Draco, is stuck standing at the apparation point, arms loaded down with presents.

"It's always like that." Ginny seems to have come out of nowhere. "They start off together. That way, if something happens and she leaves early at least they've had a visit. Don't take it personally. Can I help you carry something." She seems amused he's been left behind as a porter and Draco feels a flash of irritation at Hermione; let's see how she'd feel if he just left her on his mother's doorstep. But he turns and hands the bagged wine bottle to Ginny and says, Malfoy social training almost automatic, "Thank you for inviting me to join you. We've brought you a little something."

She pulls the bottle from the bag and her eyes widen a moment, but all she says is, "I didn't realize you knew about muggle wines."

Draco glares at her. "What's to know? You go into the shop and the sommelier picks something out."

Now she's needling him, and not that nicely. "To think, Draco Malfoy went into a muggle shop, spoke to a muggle sommelier, took muggle advice. I never thought this day would come."

"It's just a bottle of wine, Mrs. Potter," he mutters, "Not full restitution. Don't read too much into it." But something in her has subtly changed and she's leading him towards her party.

"Harry and Hermione are probably in the study. If you stand very quietly outside the door you can hear what they say. If you tell her I told you this, I will deny it and she'll believe me so don't let on," she looks at him, sharply, and he nods. "Sometimes," she continues, her voice lower now, "I've found it helpful, if there's emotional aftermath to clean up, to know what they've talked about." Draco nods more slowly, feeling, for probably the first time in his life, respect for this youngest member of the Weasley clan.

"First, though let's divest you of your other burdens," and she's pulling him to the side garden and yelling for Lavender. "Lav!"

A woman, seemingly covered in children, shakes them off and approaches. "Lav, you remember Draco Malfoy."

"Of course," she murmurs, and doesn't extend her hand in welcome. Ah, this is how she plans to play it. Draco feels a brief flash of longing for all the earnest undergraduates he's shagged over the past years. What a pleasure it had been to get them quietly drunk on cheap wine, nothing like the bottle he's offered up to Ginny Weasley, and listen to them prattle about social inequality and the class system, as if they had any idea of the pressures of a life outside their cheap little suburban tracts. As if they could possibly know what it was like to have two women, pure-bloods, knowing who he was, knowing what he's done, look him over and judge him, watching him for any tell, any weakness.

"It's lovely to see you again, Mrs. Weasley," he intones with no expression, and hands her the box he's holding. "Hermione mentioned that Ron likes to take a pint at the pub now and then and I brewed up some of the Malfoy family sobriety potion for you."

"Beg pardon?" she asks, eyebrows raised.

"Lavender…" warns Ginny.

"I didn't mean to imply he has a problem," Draco smiles at her, his polite social smile. "Simply that any woman with a houseful of children might like to be able to slip some instant sobriety into her husband's drink if he's stayed out late at the pub and comes back a bit gassed." Lavender inhales sharply and he feels himself make a mental tick in the internal tally he hasn't kept for years. Lavender: 0. Draco: 1. "It's not a miracle drug, of course, don't get too excited. It'll clear your mind right up, which makes it excellent for business deals done over drinks and why we've never sold the formula. I'm sure it will work just as well for handing toddler bedtimes, though, alas, you can never really escape your sins; you'll still feel just as miserable in the morning." 

"There, now," said Ginny, "and very thoughtful that was, too. Wasn't it Lavender? The Malfoy ability to stay sober is legendary and now we know the secret. What fun! All he brought me was some muggle wine."

"Draco Malfoy brought you muggle wine?"

"Went into a muggle shop and asked the muggle clerk about it and everything."

Lavender looks at him, then at Ginny. "You're taking the piss."

"Cross my heart and swear to die."

"Then let's open that bottle up and judge the sommelier, shall we?"

Game, set, and match to Ginny and Lavender. Shit. Hurriedly, before either woman could actually summon a corkscrew Draco hands Lavender his last package. "I understand you'd asked Hermione to bring a book for one of your assorted children." And Lavender looks at him, looks at the book, and says, "Thank you," as she takes it from his hand and Draco knows he may have lost the match but he's passed round one with the lions and is still alive.

"I won't bother introducing you to the children," Ginny is saying as she leads him towards the cottage. "Other people's toddlers always look interchangeable to me, and I assume that's true for you too. Just grab one if you see him heading towards something dangerous and, other than that, let the nanny handle them."

"You have a nanny?" How…. pure-blooded of her.

"There's not a woman alive who doesn't want a nanny when she's got three under four. OK, now here's the kitchen, where the food is, and the toilet is all the way down that hall. The study is the second door on the left." She looks at him and he slowly nods and they both walk, silently, down the hall and pause outside the door.

"…is it OK, Hermione? Really?" Harry is talking. Draco feels Ginny place her hand on his arm and they stand there, silently eavesdropping.

"It's better. It's really better."

"And the nightmares."

"Still… a lot."

"How is he handling them?"

"He sits up with me." Draco can actually hear her smiling. "He reads to me."

"I have a hard time picturing Draco Malfoy, Death Eater, perched on the edge of your bed, reading you a bedtime story, especially since you've never let either Ron or I so much as hand you a handkerchief, but I'm glad. Really glad, 'Mione." There's a pause. "What does he read you? I admit I'd love to know. _101 Dark Curses Every Boy Should Know_? _Quiddich Through the Ages_?"

Draco prepares himself for an afternoon of Jane Austen based mockery. But Hermione saves him. "Oh, just whatever's on my nightstand."

"You're making that poor man read _Hogwarts: A History_ to you, aren't you? Oh, Hermione, that's crueler than Azkaban."

Draco waits for the denial but instead she says, in her little prim voice, "I don't see what you have against that book. It's really very fascinating." Pause "Besides, it's not the words that matter, not really, it's just having him there, just listening to his voice."

And with that, Ginny steers him back outside. She looks at him, "Do you really read to her?"

"Does Potter really have panic attacks?"

She narrows her eyes at him. "He'll probably have one tonight but, in general, it's much better. The first few years were rough for all of us. And if you have any intention of using this against him, ever, I will personally hex you to hell and back."

Draco puts his hands up in mock surrender, then says, "Yes, I read to her. It seems to help." He pauses. She's offered him a tiny droplet of real power over both her and Potter. No threat of a legal hex, or even one of the quasi-legal ones she surely knows, would really stop him if he wanted to expose Potter's panic attacks and she knows it. He is obliged, if she is an equal, to give her some kind of power over him in return. He takes a deep breath. "It's not that _Hogwarts_ book, though. It's Jane Austen."

Ginny raises an eyebrow.

"A muggle writer. Of romance stories."

Ginny smiles slowly, dangerously. But all she says is, "Welcome to my home, Draco Malfoy."

. . . . . . . . . .

Draco stands at the edge of the garden, watching an interminable number of small children play some equally interminable game that appears to involve a lot of mud and no discernable rules. He wonders that Hermione deceived Harry Potter about their nightmare reading routine, protecting him from being teased about reading romance novels. He wonders that Ginny Potter, pure-blood and blood traitor, has formally welcomed him to her home. The ground is shifting under his feet. He doesn't know where he'll land.

. . . . . . . . . .

"Care for a little pick-up quiddich? Just a quick 'catch-the-snitch' contest?" Ron tosses him a practice ball and it vibrates in his hand.

"I didn't bring a broom," Draco demurs, but he can feel himself tensing with the familiar, pleasurable pre-game rush.

"We have spares," says Harry.

"Of course, if you are afraid to face us…," Ron suggests with a vicious smile. "Well, I'd understand."

"Two-on-one?" asks Draco, lazily fingering the snitch.

"I'll play with Draco," Ginny tosses him the spare broom and he catches it with the other hand.

"We wouldn't want you to be outnumbered, ferret," says Ron. "It'd give you a built-in excuse when we beat you."

"When we beat you, you mean," replies Draco, and he releases the snitch and the four of them are up in the air, swooping and he's laughing and soaring through the sky and nothing, nothing, is quite as fun as this game, even with all the undercurrents of dominance and power. 'Sport,' he thinks, 'is just polite war.' It's his second bout with the lions today but this is his game, this is his element, and, even if he loses the snitch, this is the most beautiful afternoon he's spent in years.

. . . . . . . . .

Hermione is laughing as she watches the four of them fly through the air. She can follow Draco's pale head easily as he flies to and fro, looking for the snitch. She can hear his laughter and faint shouts as the four of them abuse each other. She doesn't notice Lavender watching her, observing the sparkle in her eyes, seeing that she is smiling, that she isn't holding onto a glass with whitened knuckles.

. . . . . . . . .

Ron passes over five galleons, and Harry says, "You should know better than to bet against love, Ron. Love always wins."

"Do you really think it's love? The idea makes me ill."

Harry watches Hermione, leaning into Draco as she talks to Ginny. "I think it will be."

. . . . . . . . . .

She's hugging Ron goodbye, and he whispers into her hair, "It's so good to see you happy, 'Mione. You know I'd do anything for you, right?" She looks at him, questioningly, but he just gives her a shove and says, "Get home with your ferret. His litter probably needs changing." and they're apparating away and the day is over.

. . . . . . . . .

"I can't believe it turns out to be Draco Malfoy, of all people," Ron dries the dish Lavender handed him and put it in the cupboard. "That two-faced coward. With 'Mione."

"Ron," Lavender hands him another dish. "He's good for her."

"How can that evil little bastard be good for anyone?" Ron slams the dish down.

"Don't break the plates." Lavender sets down the pan she is working on and turns to face her husband, leaning her hip on the edge of the sink. "Look. Every year she comes to Ginny's picnic, leaves after no more than an hour looking like she's seen a ghost. Last year, the year before that, the year before that, right?"

Ron nods.

"This year she stayed over three hours and when they apparated out she looked up at him with a smile on her face. He makes her happy. He brings her peace. Learn to like him."

"But…," Ron splutters. "He's DRACO."

"What's more important? Your love for Hermione or your hatred of Draco."

"It's a bit more than school-yard rivalry, Lavender! He let Death Eaters into Hogwarts."

"Question stands. Which is more important?"

"Hermione," Ron admits.

"Than learn to like him."

"How did you get so smart?" Ron asks, leaning over to kiss her.

"It's really more that you're an idiot in these types of things. And, besides, if he hurts her…" Lavender waves her dishrag at the bulletin board where Ron had tacked the note Draco had owled him.

"He'll let me kill him."

"There you go."

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. . . . . . . . . .

**TheJesusFreak777** – _I don't think it's unreasonable to dislike Draco in chapter 10; he's being a jerk. Even if his behavior is grounded in the dark place he's in it's still really unacceptable. I want Hermione to pull him to the light, at least part of the way, but I don't think he can wallow is misery for 7 years and then be all "Hey, it's all good now!" after a week with her. He's got quite a journey, complete with some nasty little pitfalls, ahead of him but he has to get to the place where he tries to atone by actually DOING something instead of wallowing in self-pity. Trying to take care of Hermione is a first step._

**ArwenUndomiel16 – **_Thank you! I hope you like this one, a few happier and lighter moments after a lot of wallowing._

**Dmunoz2012 – **_Thank you so much!_


	14. Chapter 14 - Do You Want the World?

**A/N - ** _This one starts to get a tad smutty, and there are veiled suggestions of non-consensual sex._

. . . . . . . . . .

"I've been thinking," she says.

Draco doesn't look up from his book. "I really wish you wouldn't."

"What?"

"Last time you had an idea, you dragged me out to show me off to your neighbors. Scrawny-and-nervous threatened to call an auror and did call the Prophet. Now we have to go to a Ministry ball to give a muck-raking gossip columnist a photo so she'll retract that I've imperiused you and will, instead, publish that I'm a fine, upstanding member of society. I'd prefer it if from now on you didn't think."

"His name is Andrew."

"Mmmm. I find it difficult to remember the names of people who don't matter."

"You can be such a dick."

"I don't know why you persist in thinking I'm a nice person. I'm really not."

"You're nice to me. Usually."

"That, Hermione Jean Granger, is because you matter." Draco sets the book aside. "Have you asked yourself what happens if you patch me back together and you don't like who I am? What if I am, in fact, a right bastard."

"I don't think that's going to happen; you've seen enough torture and murder, Draco, and it haunts you. I'm not exactly worried you'll go down that road. You aren't that person any longer."

"I'm not talking about torture and murder." Draco settles back into the chair and smiles at her and she's actually chilled by the expression. She hadn't realized, until that moment, that 'my blood ran cold' wasn't just a colourful turn of phrase. "You like to conveniently forget I was raised by my loving father to seek out power, to dominate others. What if you fix me and I decide to just be better at it than the narrow-minded pure-blood zealots you fought?

"The Dark Lord was an idiot," he continues. "Death. Torture. Terrorizing his own followers. That sort of thing in a leader really discourages initiative. Not to mention the practical problems of his racist classism. The numbers don't work; the pool of pure-bloods is just too small to build a sustainable political empire on, especially if you plan on oppressing and enslaving everyone else. Idiocy, really. It's astonishing he did as well as he did and, let's face it, in the end he was beaten by school children and a dead man. He was never going to succeed.

"If you and my loving mother redeem me in the eyes of our little world, however, I can conquer that world with commerce, Hermione, and I can do it far more surely than he ever would have with terror." There wasn't a hint of mockery in his tone, just a low intensity. "Then I could lay it at your feet, I could give it to you as an ornament. Would you like that? Would you like our world as a bauble for your pretty neck?"

"Stop. Just stop. It's scaring me that you've even thought this through this way." She remembers, a little uneasily, that the Blacks are notoriously unstable and that Narcissa Malfoy was a Black.

"I'm sorry." He takes a deep breath, seems to try to shake off the mood. Then he comes over to her, kisses the top of her head. "I never want to scare you. Do think carefully, please, about whether you really want to save me. If you take away my hair-shirt you might not like the man you find. Be, as they say, very, very careful what you wish for."

"You're a good man, Draco."

He shakes his head. "If by that you mean I'm not a murdering psychopath, then, yes. But I'm not like you, Hermione. I'm not like Harry. I don't rush in to save the downtrodden. I don't sacrifice myself for others. I'm never going to be that man."

"You rush in to save me almost every night," she mutters and he laughs and pulls her up out of her seat tightly into his arms.

"You idiot. That's because I lo…" She turns her head sharply up to look at his face and he stops short. "That's because you matter. Don't assume I'm going to do that for anyone else. Besides, I'd certainly never describe you as 'downtrodden.'"

"Well," she tries to lighten the mood. "I certainly don't want you rushing into the bedrooms of any of your other women."

"Since I can't remember any of their names tracking them down would be tricky." He's laughing and pulling them both back down to the couch, dragging her across his lap and starting to kiss her along the edge of her jaw. She's shocked and a bit outraged.

"You can't remember their names? You had sex with who-knows-how-many muggle women and can't even remember their names?"

"Why would I?" He sounds genuinely puzzled. "They didn't matter to me. They were using me. I was using them. Do you remember all the names of the men you've been with in the last seven years?" He looks at her, though, and he knows the answer just by her eyes. She does remember them, and the memories aren't happy ones. His own eyes darken and he leans forward, "Would you like to tell them to me?" he whispers in her ear.

The chill is back in her veins, but, gods help her, so is the tiniest frisson of excitement.

"I know they hurt you, Hermione," he's still whispering in her ear and she's frozen in place. "I know they told you to 'get over it', that they couldn't handle your nightmares. I had a long talk with Harry, you know, while you were off with Lavender and Ginny. He was right not to approve of any of them. Tell me their names, and I'll ruin them for you. I can ensure they wake at night, caught in nightmares no one understands, and no one will ever know."

"Draco…." He's walking the edge of a dangerous mood again and this time she's too flustered to talk about fate and pre-destination to try to bring him back to himself. This time, even as her mind recoils from the admission, she's just a little thrilled that someone would offer to defend her this way.

He drags his lips along the edge of her jaw, then down along her throat and she lifts her chin and gasps. He begins to quietly unbutton her blouse and is kissing her along the swell of her breasts, wrapping his hands around the curves, stroking the satin. He lowers his mouth and licks at her nipple through the fabric then blows on the damp spot he's left and the chill courses through her and she's closing her eyes and breathing in short, rapid, shaky bursts. "Draco," she says again, only now her brain is no longer engaged enough to be worried and she's solely focused on his hands and mouth on her and he's laughing, though more with bitter mockery than happiness or pleasure, as she reaches for him. He grabs her hands, pins them above her head and holds them there with one hand, her elbows bent, pushing her hard into the arm of the couch, and she can feel the fabric rubbing against her wrists as she squirms under him and she's moaning as he uses a knee to push her legs apart while he, panting, turns his mouth from one satin-covered nipple to the other.

"No," he suddenly yanks himself back and she's lying on the couch, arms up, blouse open, legs parted and he's standing above her. She flushes in furious humiliation.

"I'm not going to take you when I've got violence oozing out of my pores like this. Not the first time. Not like this. Not you. No." He's out the door, down the stairs to the shop and out into the street before she can stop him.

. . . . . . . . . .

Draco hurtles his body through the street, trying to outpace his own mood. Hoping he hasn't fucking broken her, hoping he hasn't screwed this all up. God FUCKING dammit. He slams his fist into the wall of the alley he's stalking down, stops and leans up against the bricks, breathing hard.

. . . . . . . . . .

When he climbs the stairs back to the flat he almost expects the wards to be set against him, but the door opens when he turns the knob. The main room is dark and her door is closed. He stands outside it for a long time, his hand on the wood, hoping, then goes to his own room.

. . . . . . . . . .

She can't sleep. She hears him come in. Hears him stand outside her door. Finally, hears him turn and walk away.

She's sitting on the bed in the dark, with her knees pulled up, her arms wrapped around them. She doesn't trust herself, right now, to say anything to him, not until she's sorted out in her head, at least a little bit, what she's feeling. I'll lay the world at your feet, but don't expect me to act like a rational human being for more than 5 minutes at a time. I'll destroy anyone who's ever hurt you, but I'll leave you, humiliated, sprawled on the couch.

She has trouble reconciling the man who reads to her with the man who talks about conquering the world but she admits, as she sits there, that he could probably do it if he really wanted to. The wizarding world is so small, the economy so simple, that anyone with a good mind, capital, and the ability to interact with the muggle business world could probably build an empire. There just aren't that many wizards who even know what a pound is, much less a euro. He wouldn't have any competition, she realizes in quiet awe; he'd own the world before anyone even noticed. She tries to decide if this bothers her. She doesn't think that it does. Business on a large scale doesn't especially interest her, but money is only a tool. Hating money is like hating a wand.

She doesn't think, though, that Draco is even particularly interested in money. He's never been without it, he certainly has no idea what privation is, but he seems to have fairly simple tastes. He likes good food, lots of books and not having to work, but he's not exactly wallowing in luxury goods. He'd shown up at her flat with one knapsack of clothes and one of books. No, this is not a man who inordinately likes stuff. What he wants, she thinks, is power; no wonder _Macbeth_ had sent him into an emotional spiral. She doubts he wants power for its own sake, she thinks he wants it for control, for safety; if you have enough power, no one can hurt you. Even that, though, is a little frightening to contemplate in a friend. In a lover. Assuming that ever happens which, after tonight, she's feeling a bit bitter about.

Power accumulation rarely makes people good.

She can't talk to him.

She knows she won't sleep until she does.

She finally goes to his room, opens the door. He's instantly alert, silent, tense.

She steps in, stops. The room is dark, a square of silver light on the floor from the window, moonlight. There's another, very faint, rectangle from the open door. She can't really see him but she can feel the way he's poised, fight or flight. Is she predator, here, or the prey? "Don't fucking do that to me again." She tries again. "Don't walk out like that. Not in the middle of…" she hesitates. "Not ever."

"You hate me," he sounds bleak. "I can get out."

"I don't fucking hate you." She's suddenly too tired to do this. Too tired to fight. This is one more thing he's going to add to his infinite list of reasons to hate himself. One more thing he'll try to atone for via pointless self-flagellation. Gods. She wishes he'd accept he wasn't to blame for the things he'd done at wand-point at 17, wishes he'd take responsibility for what he did to her tonight, for his wild, dangerous mood swings. Wishes he'd stop using the loathing of strangers to assuage his guilt, wishes he'd find something constructive to do instead.

She settles for, "That wasn't nice, what you did."

"I was afraid I'd hurt you."

She sits down, on the floor, right in the square of silver moonlight, pulls her knees back up and looks up at him, at where he is, in the dark, on the bed, waits for an explanation. She thinks of the origins of the word lunatic, to be insane, that sleeping in moonlight was once thought to make you a lunatic. She wonders if sleeping in the moonlight will make her insane, more insane than she is to be having this conversation, to be living with this man.

"I was afraid I'd _hurt_ you," he tries again.

"I can assure you, Malfoy, what you were doing wasn't causing me pain." She's getting pissed off again, riled up again. "Not until you fucking _left_, and I had to wonder what the _fuck_ was so godsawful _wrong_ with me that not minutes after you were threatening to go after my exes you storm out. Threaten exes. Lick nipples. Leave. Excuse me for being just a _tad_ upset that my body appears to have been the _tipping point_ into _driving you away_." Great, she's hysterical and now she's crying too. Just fucking great. She runs the back of her hand across her eyes and she's about to open her mouth again when he cuts her off.

"_I WANTED to hurt you_!" and she's shocked silent, shocked well and truly silent. "I wanted to grind your wrists even harder into that couch. I pinned you and you gasped and, oh FUCK Hermione, it turned me on and I wanted to hold you down and MAKE you do what I wanted. I was in a dark mood and I know it's no excuse but, _fuck_, for the past seven years when I've felt that way all I've done is pick up some idiot muggle and fuck her brains out."

"If she were an idiot that shouldn't have taken very long." A mutter.

"Would you _shut up_ and listen to me? I don't need your fucking flippancy right now. I left so I wouldn't _hurt you_, not because I didn't _want you_."

"Oh." Then, "Don't infantilize me. I would have told you if you'd crossed a line."

"You assume I would have listened? I might not have." His laugh is harsh. "Don't you get it? I want our first time to not be _that_. To not be me using you, using your body, to push away shit that scares me. I probably will, Granger. If you don't kick me out, if you let me, I'll probably use your body plenty of times to push the demons away, it's what I know how to do, but _not the first time_!"

"Oh," and she's nodding in the darkness. That made sense, actually. That was actually kind of… sweet. Emotionally damaged, but kind of sweet. Well, she thinks, I can't really complain about people being emotionally damaged. "I… I think I understand."

She sits in the moonlight, legs pulled up, and rests her cheek on her knee. "Draco."

She can hear him exhale. "Yes."

"Would you please stop worrying about me kicking you out? It's kind of annoying."

Long pause, and she's taking her hair and making small braids in it near her face, little thin plaits, one after another, hanging down, and he's still not answering. She looks up, and her eyes have adjusted enough that she can see him in the dim, moonlit room, sitting up on the bed, leaning on one arm. He looks at her, in the square of light on his floor, watching him, then slowly nods.

Then, looking at the bed she asks, "Should I stay?"

He's silent for a moment and she cringes, afraid of rejection, then, "Don't hog the covers, Granger." And she's in the bed, in his bed, his arm is around her and she's pulled tightly to him; she can feel his breath on the back of her neck. She feels her body relax into him.

"Draco," she mumbles, almost afraid to say this but, what the hell, it's been a long night.

"Mmm?"

"Next time you pin me, don't let go of my wrists, OK?"

His breath catches and then releases slowly, and while one hand is pulling her close to his chest she feels the other one reach up and, tentatively at first, then with more force, make a fist in her hair. "I think I can do that."

And with that, she's falling asleep. The lovely Hermione Granger is falling asleep in the bed of a man who is probably a lot darker than she had thought, but who, she knows, is also a lot lighter than he is yet willing to believe. She thinks she might be able to live with that.

. . . . . . . . . .

**Honoria Granger** –_ As always, thank you! (I heard your 'voice' in my head today as I was confusing myself whether a word should be 'who', because it was in apposition to the object of a preposition, or 'whom', as it was the subject of a subordinate clause. )_

**ArwenUndomiel16 **– _Thank you! "The die" comes from the quote at the end of chapter 1. "Alea iacta est." It means "the die is cast" and it is, reportedly, what Caesar said as he crossed the Rubicon, committing to fighting Pompey and invading Rome. It has come to mean an action that, once committed to, has inevitable and significant consequences. Once the die is cast you are 'past the point of no return.'_

**TheJesusFreak777** - _They have to have SOME fun and light moments! I'm glad you think I caught the feeling of Ginny and Ron. :)_

**dracosgirl007** - _Thank you so, so much. This is the first creative writing I've done in years and I'm glad it's not too painfully awkward._

**foreverkake** – _Thank you!_

**Siren34 **– _Good guess! Narcissa is coming up, but first a little smut…_

**cuddlycannons** - _I admit I don't really __like__ canon-Lavender so it was nice to be able to turn her into an adult. I'm so happy your enjoying the fic!_


	15. Chapter 15 - Night, no mare

She doesn't have a nightmare.

When she opens her eyes the windows are just beginning to lighten and Draco's fingers are still caught in her hair. She flinches when she moves her head and the tangled strands yank against her scalp, she pulls them out from his grasp and he opens his eyes. She props herself up on one elbow, looks down at him and places one finger over his lips. He lazily closes his eyes again and is asleep.

She looks at him, at the way his features relax in sleep, at how his hair is almost translucent even in this early, dim light. She just watches him until she slips back down, back into sleep.

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. . . . . . . . . .

**A/N** – So, I realize this is absurdly short but I am trying, structurally, to keep the nightmare chapters separate units rather than tacking them on to the bottom of the previous sections. I'm posting this and 16 at the same time because, really, neither is very long but this is minuscule.

**Honoria Granger** – _Thank you, as always! I was a much younger adult when the "Antioch Rules" had just become a discussed thing at colleges in the states, and because I was at a school with a culture very similar to Antioch's we had a lot of discussions about what consent was and how you determined it. In this kind of situation I rather admire Draco for erring on the side of caution – they don't really have enough shared sexual history yet for him to be confident that he's reading her non-explicit cues correctly – but I fully appreciate her irritation that he assumed she wouldn't speak her mind. I don't really see the character as a shrinking violet who would lie there and tolerate sexual hijinks she wasn't into. Not that I thought about that WAY too much before writing it, or another not-fully-vanilla scene where I'm trying to make sure consent is really clear the whole way through as I am, personally, really turned off by non-consensual scenes._

** . ** – _Thank you so much! I just hope you don't expect me to rise to the standard you've set (been skimming your stories, I confess, and, umm, yum.)._

**Pregiera** - T_hank you so so much. Yeah, you really can't keep it canon if you put Draco and Hermione together. _

**Guest** – _Thank you! I feel a tad like I've pulled a bait and switch from "look at the sweet comfort story" to "but there's going to be some non-vanilla sex" so I'm hoping no one recoils in horror and feels like it wasn't what they signed up for when they started reading. I'm afraid in a week the updates will probably slow down for the rest of summer because there's going to be too much going on in my "real life" but I'm pretty oddly obsessed with this right now so they won't stop altogether._

**TheJesusFreak777**– _I'm sorry he's freaking you out. If it's any comfort, if I have a mental tag line for where this is going it's "love wins." I hope to let Draco work through the questions of what it means to be good as he starts to not live in fear and self-hatred. Which is a bit of a tall order and I'll probably fail miserably, but I'm not planning on turning him into Dark Lord 2.0._


	16. Chapter 16 - This is what I want

**A/N – **Adult content. Also, first adult content I've ever (EVER) written so, be kind, I beg of you.

. . . . . . . . . .

Draco has, it would seem, been up for a while. He has arranged himself, like an offering, at the table. Shirtless, tea in hand, he lounges in jeans and, apparently, nothing else while reading a muggle paper. He doesn't even look up when she opens his door. She's discovered he's unpleasant before a morning caffeine infusion, that he likes to slip out and pick up the _Telegraph_, that he can, apparently, sweet talk women at patisseries into saving croissants for him. She's knows he's terrified his mother is up to something, she knows something passed between him and Ginny, some kind of understanding that left them, if not friends, than allies. She's coming to realize that, even without all the issues of the war, he might actually not be what before now she would have considered an especially good person and that, somewhat astonishingly, she doesn't care. She's learned a lot about Draco Malfoy since he moved in, a rather intensive education, as well as some uncomfortable things about herself, but she's never actually seen him shirtless before. He tends to wear long sleeves all the time. She's rather shocked to realize that. He's slept in her bed, she's slept in his, she's been held tightly against that chest any number of times, but she's never seen him like this.

She stands in the doorway of his room, hair shoved up into a loose bun with some of the little braids from the night before falling down over her eyes and nose, and stares at the perfection of him.

"I think," she finally says, "you've left something out in your litany of what you've been doing to pass your days."

He looks at her, eyebrow raised. "Oh?"

"Yes." She keeps looking at him. "Somewhere in that 'staring at walls' and 'visiting my mother' and 'going to plays' you seem to have left out 'exercising my body like a driven fiend.'"

Draco looks steadily at her. "Physical exercise is one of the things that quiets the voices that tell me I'm a monster, at least for a while."

"Oh."

"It was that, public scorn and cheap sex.

"Oh."

"Cheap sex appears to be off the table as a coping mechanism, and between you and my mother I am apparently no longer going to be allowed public scorn either. I'd probably better get a gym membership that's closer to your flat."

"Oh, Draco." She crosses the room, watching his eyes, watching him watch her, and circles behind his chair. She places her hands over his chest and runs them first down to his waist, then up again to his shoulders and along his arms and feels his body preen like a cat under her palms.

"Is this what you want?" His voice is so carefully controlled, the utter self-mastery she's learned to recognize he uses to hide his most volatile pain and fear. She leans in and wraps her arms around him. "This will change everything, Hermione. This could be a very bad idea. And I don't want to do this if I'm just your coping mechanism. I don't want you to be mine, not this way." He stands, shoves the chair out of the way with his foot, turns around within her arms and suddenly she's wrapped against that chest, eyes closed, feeling the length of his body, feeling the erection straining at those jeans. "And you have to accept, you have to really truly accept, that I am not some knight in shining armour."

"You're not a monster, Draco."

"No," he says, very quietly. "But I'm a selfish man. I don't care about strangers or world hunger or muggle orphans. I only care about you. You pull me to the light, but if we do this, if we go down this road, I'm going to pull you to the darkness too. Power and domination are too much a part of my soul to be eradicated. I can only channel those leanings one way or another. And I don't want to do this as a lie, I don't want to pretend to be someone I'm not, not with you."

"You're not just darkness and rage and fear. You're also light and laughter and…" her voice catches, "love. No one is wholly good or wholly bad. Not you, not me."

He takes a deep breath. "If we do this, I'll never be able to pretend it didn't happen. There's no going back. So I need you to be very, very sure that you can accept who I really am. That, given my darkness, this is still what you want."

"This is what I want," she says, no hesitation.

She reaches her hands up to his face and pulls him down, feels his lips on hers, first slowly and then with a violent urgency. He is consuming her, trying to drown himself in her. She wrenches her mouth away and gasps, "Draco…" and then he's shoving her against the wall and yanking her robe down; whether she was the predator or the prey last night, she's surely the prey in this moment. He stares for a moment at her breasts and groans before lowering his mouth to one nipple, then the other. Her hands are in his hair, that glorious pale hair she so loves, and her head is thrown back against the wall as she arches out into his mouth, into his hands, giving herself to him and wishing, willing him to take her. He reaches down and scrapes fingers across the outside of her knickers and a she hears herself make a soft keening sound. If he walks away this time she might actually kill him, actually end him right there.

"No regrets!" he demands, his mouth hot against her skin, his arms grabbing her, lowering her to the floor right there. "Never!" she gasps out as he pushes the rest of her robe out of the way and reaches towards the waist of his jeans. One yank and the button

fly is open, he's shoving the jeans down and off, hooking her knickers down with his fingers, grazing those fingers across her. He looks up at her, that smirk, oh gods that smirk is going to be her undoing. "I think you might like me." He draws his fingers across her again and then shoves them into her and then his thumb is working her and she is lost. "I do," she chokes out, "Oh, I really, really do." And then he's in her, and she's moving along him and her hands are holding him and he's breathing into her neck and that hair is in her face and oh, gods, she's lost, she's lost and her head is thrown back and he's thrusting into her and then, then it's over. He lies there, rolling to the side a little, getting the bulk of his weight off her, and looks at her.

"Are you OK?" he asks.

She pulls his mouth to hers and kisses him slowly, running her tongue around his lips. She nudges him over, until he's lying on his back, looking up at her as she moves to straddle him. He reaches up and tucks one of the thin, unraveling braids of hair behind her ear but it promptly falls forward again. My hair is unraveling, she thinks. I am unraveling. Let me be unbound. She looks at his chest. She looks at his hair. She looks at his eyes and sees them watching her warily, waiting, again, to be told to leave. "Yeah," she says. "Though I'm not sure 'OK' really covers it." She traces her fingers across his chest. "How about you? Are you OK?"

"As long as you are. No regrets?"

"Never." She breathes deeply.

"Everything's different now."

She looks at him. Men can be so stupid, thinking sex is somehow the most important thing. "Everything was different after last night. This is just…"

"… the fun part?"

Hermione begins to laugh, somewhat hysterically. "I'll have to owl Ginny."

Draco props himself up on one arm and reaches forward with the other hand to trace slow circles around one of her nipples. "Why, exactly, does shagging me on the floor require an owl to Ginny?"

"Because," she gasps, "the note she sent, when Harry invited us her picnic. Remember."

He's watching her nipples both harden and says, "Mmm, hmmm. I didn't realize that was from Ginny. As you may recall, you didn't let me read it." As he flicks a finger back and forth over them and she feels her body vibrate in time to his finger.

"Didn't you ever wonder what she wrote?"

"Mmm, hmmmm?"

"I can't think if you're doing that."

Draco lies back down and puts his hands behind his head. "OK, Granger. I will stop long enough for you to explain what was in that note that made you blush so becomingly when you read it."

"She'd asked if you were as good in bed as your body led her to believe you must be."

"And what do you plan to tell her?"

"I think I might tell you you're not bad, but that you could use some more practice."

He looks outraged for a moment. "I think," he finally says, reaching up towards her again, "that I can accommodate you in that."


	17. Chapter 17 - Tea with Narcissa 2

She hands him the note as soon as he walks into the kitchen, before he even has any caffeine. Draco glares at her and shoves it into a pocket. "Not YET, Hermione," he mutters and looks around for the kettle. She hands him a cup and waits for him to gulp enough tea to be civil, to be functional, and then says, "Read it. Tell me what to do."

He groans and put the tea down and advances towards her. She moves backwards as he moves into her personal space, he suspects she doesn't even know she's doing it, until her back is pressed against the window. The he leans down and kisses first the left side of her mouth, then the right. "Good morning to you, too, sunshine."

"READ it," she insists, though he notices she's got her fingers tangled up in his hair again and seems to be pulling his mouth towards her and he laughs as he presses first his mouth, then the length of his body, against her. "I can't read it if you're distracting me like this." But he fishes the note out and holds it up so he can continue to nuzzle her neck and read at the same time.

_My Dear Miss Granger,_

_After too many years I am opening up the Malfoy townhouse again and I would like to request the honor of your company at a small gathering on Friday at Three. Draco knows the address._

_Yours Sincerely,_

_Narcissa Malfoy_

Draco drops the letter and backs away from it and her.

"I don't do parties," Hermione is saying, nervously, "not even with the DA. I can have tea with her, I told you I'd have tea with her, but there's no way I can go to some afternoon social and not panic. Especially not with your mother's friends. No. "

"Of course not." He points his finger at the note, lying on the floor and says, "This, this is trouble." He looks at the shaking Hermione and just says, "I'll take care of it."

. . . . . . . . . .

He returns that afternoon, passes her a bottle of wine, sets a bag on the counter, and says, "It's handled. Tea on Thursday at 4. Just you and her."

"What if she'd accepted," he'd snapped at his mother, who, of course, had rested on her settee looking perfectly composed. "What if I'd let her accept? Did you plan to parade the mudblood around like an exotic animal in front of your friends? What were you thinking?"

"I was thinking she would perhaps be uncomfortable coming out to the Manor because of the _contretemps_ with Bella."

"Your sister, my aunt, carved mudblood into her arm and crucioed her on the floor. I think that's a bit more than a minor disagreement."

"And thus why I am opening the townhouse. I want to ensure she feels at ease."

"There is no muggle-born witch alive who is going to feel at ease at a pure-blood party thrown by Narcissa Malfoy, especially not Hermione. Did you know she's had trouble with crowds ever since the War? Crowds of her _friends_?" He'd paced in front of her. "Mother, I love you, but what are you doing?"

"Please sit down, Draco, you're giving me the headache."

"Than take a potion," he'd snapped, and continued to pace.

"Also, dear, I don't think you should refer to your friend as a 'mudblood'. Many people find that word offensive."

He'd narrowed his eyes. "Since when have you objected to the word 'mudblood'?"

"Don't be so vulgar, Draco." She'd patted the seat next to her and, recognizing the implicit order, he'd sat. "I am sorry. I didn't realize the poor girl had difficulties in crowds." Narcissa had paused. "Interesting she's taking you out to the Ball in that case, isn't it?"

Trapped, Draco had stared at her.

"As the situation stands," she'd continued, "I see even a small gathering is clearly going to be too overwhelming. Perhaps she'd consent to join me for tea the day before? Say, at 4:00?"

Now he's unpacking some bread. "I got cheese," he says, and hands it to Hermione. "And some grapes."

. . . . . . . . . .

They arrive, the door opens, and Narcissa stands there. Draco's not sure he's ever seen his mother open the door herself before. She smiles at him, gestures to Hermione to enter, but when he moves to follow, his mother stops him. "You can pick her up in 90 minutes. This is time for us to talk, girl to girl, without you." And the door is shut, the wards are up, and Hermione is alone with his mother.

. . . . . . . . . .

Draco arrives on Harry Potter's doorstep. Ginny has formally welcomed him to her home therefore, he tells himself, this unannounced visit is merely very, very rude and not actually unspeakable. He pounds on the door, Ginny opens it, looks at him, and immediately passes a small child from her hip to the hovering nanny.

"Draco?"

"Hermione is at my mother's house behind locked wards."

And she's bringing him inside and yelling for Harry.

. . . . . . . . . .

Narcissa sets down the small gift Hermione handed her upon entering, leads the way through the townhouse to a sunlit room, filled with flowers. A small table has been laid with two place-settings for tea and Hermione sits down into one of the chairs, watching her hostess. Narcissa joins her, settling down into the other chair with a grace that spoke of years of ballet lessons.

"Poor Draco probably thinks I have you in chains in the basement by now, but I just wanted a chance to talk to you without him hovering."

Hermione waits for Narcissa to pour, silent, still, takes the unsweetened cup.

"He can be very protective." Hermione pauses, and then continues, "I think because he feels he himself was so exposed when he was younger he overcompensates." She sips her tea and looks at Narcissa over the edge of her cup, waiting to see if the dig goes home. Unexpectedly, the woman is smiling, a genuine warm smile.

"I knew he had chosen well in you." She pauses and takes a sip herself. "Welcome, my dear, to the Malfoy family."

Hermione drops her cup, her probably priceless cup, and the sound of it breaking on the hard conservatory floor is very loud in the silent room.

. . . . . . . . . .

"Tell me this again." Harry had a dangerous glint in his eye.

He ran his fingers through his hair. "Hermione is at tea with my mother and I'm not welcome. I am, in fact, locked out."

"You left Hermione alone with Narcissa Malfoy?"

"She won't hurt her. At least, I don't think so. Not physically." Just saying that makes Draco relax because he knows, as he hears himself say it, that it's true. His mother had never broken his toys and she's not likely to start now. "She may flay her alive with etiquette, though, in an attempt to find out whatever it is she's looking for." Draco takes a deep breath. "She's up to something and I don't know what it is. Potter, I know you think the whole Death Eater cadre was a bunch of crazed fanatics but there are gradations of insanity, even within zealots and many of the wives were just along for the ride."

Draco met Harry Potter's eyes. "I believe, in the core of my being, that if my mother had supported the Dark Lord the way Aunt Bella did, you'd be dead and we'd all be living under Voldemort's hand, at least until his inevitable self-destruction, the mad bastard, and society's subsequent descent into violent chaos. I love my mother, but she is amoral, brilliant, and almost totally opaque. As far as I know, the only thing she cares about is me, and she somehow knows everything I do. If she announced that black were white most of the pure-blood world would agree with her and she's up to something and that something involves Hermione. And that scares the fuck out of me."

. . . . . . . . . .

"Why did you let him take the Mark?"

"Because he would have been killed otherwise. I would, Miss Granger, do anything to ensure Draco's survival. Even things that other people might make the mistake – once – of judging me for."

"Please," she says sweetly, "Call me Hermione."

"And you must call me Narcissa, Hermione."

. . . . . . . . . .

"90 minutes. And then we break the wards if we have to."

Draco never thought he'd say this to Harry Potter, not and mean it. "Thank you. I'm probably being irrational, but…"

"It's Narcissa Malfoy."

"Exactly."

. . . . . . . . . .

"He said he'd give me the world."

"Do you want the world?" Narcissa delicately sips her tea and enjoys the flash in Hermione's eyes.

"All I want is Draco."

"But what if Draco comes with the world?"

Hermione puts her tea cup down and smiles coolly at Narcissa, and the older woman wants to cheer her for this poise. A year from now, she thinks, maybe less, and this untutored girl will be able to hold her own with anyone. "Then I'll take the world."

. . . . . . . . . .

At 89 minutes and 30 seconds Narcissa opens the door just as Draco raises his hand to hammer on it. "Draco," she acknowledges. "Harry Potter?" She raises her eyebrows. "What an unexpected pleasure. I am afraid, however, that I cannot ask either of you in as I was just leaving."

Hermione steps to the doorway and Draco feels the tension in his chest release, then constrict again as his mother gives Hermione a public air kiss. A very public air kiss on a street lined with expensive townhouses, which, he suspects, are filled with people watching this little scene from behind their front curtains. His mother has her lips brushing the air right above the skin of a muggle-born witch. His muggle-born witch. He looks at Harry, whose mouth has literally fallen open.

"Flies, Harry," says Narcissa, looking at his mouth with some disdain. "It was a pleasure, Hermione. Think on what I have said, yes?"

"Yes, Narcissa," and Draco, hearing the first names, looks at his mother with suddenly narrowed eyes but she simply smiles blandly at him and the door is closed and Hermione is muttering "Your mother is fucking terrifying," as they descend the steps and head towards home.

. . . . . . . . . .

He's glaring at her. "What were you thinking? 'Yes, Narcissa'" he mimics, adding a sycophantic simper to the words. "What was that?" His hands are on her upper arms and fear flecks the grey of his eyes. She thinks she might get bruises where he's holding her and she flicks a glance at one of his hands, then looks expectantly at his face, eyebrows raised, frowning at him. He releases her and steps back, then balls his hands into fists, holding himself down and in.

"Shh." She moves until their bodies are almost touching, just a whisper of space between them, controlling the air around him, filling all his spaces with herself. "I rather like her, actually." And, even in the fist of this anger and relief, he feels a little grateful for the perversity of women, for this courageous woman who can decide to like his almost indomitable mother.

"Hermione…"

"It's OK. Nothing happened except that I broke a cup; she formidable and she surprised me and she shouldn't have, I should have been a little better prepared, but I'm unharmed."

"It's just…"

"…I know." And now she's leaning up against him at a slight angle and letting the fabric of his shirt rub up against her cheek, reaching down to her side to unzip the oh-so-appropriate tea dress, to let it fall, encircling her feet. "You can ease your fear in me, Draco. Let me take some of this burden from you from you.

And he does. Oh, he does. And, at least for a little while, it helps.

. . . . . . . . . .

_Dearest Narcissa,_

_Thank you for the lovely tea. I would very much like to return your hospitality, perhaps a simple dinner with Draco and me in our flat?_

_Fondly,_

_Hermione_

Hermione watches the owl fly away and thinks, "Your move."

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

. . . . . . . . . .

**A/N Thank you, everyone, for taking the time to read this, and favorite it, and comment on it. I cannot tell you how thrilled I am that anyone likes this. You and your feedback are to me as an unexpected trip for ice cream is to a child! **

**TheJesusFreak777 **- _Thank you so much for your feedback! There's more poetry coming :) (not this chapter but the next one, which is mostly done but needs more proofreading.)_

**ArwenUndomiel16** - _Draco be bad? How could that ever happen? Thank you, again, for your reviews! I look forward to knowing what you think every time! _

**Guest** - _My phone is similarly difficult. No, phone, I will never EVER mean "ducking". Thank you so very much for the long and thoughtful review. I love your rambling!_

**SopranoandBass **- _First, you are absolutely right about that edit! I went in and changed it. Please don't be shy about suggestions! (I mean, I may ignore some of them as things like my lamentable habit of starting sentences with coordinating conjunctions is an "on purpose" style choice, but that doesn't mean I don't want the feedback because, hey, some style choices could sometimes use rethinking!) Second, thank you. Just… thank you. If it were still the MySpace era I'd have a row of throbbing .gif hearts thanking your for your incredibly kind words._


	18. Chapter 18 - Nightmare 5

His nightmare is bad that night. Really bad. He knows that, when he wakes, eyes rapidly open and then closed again in absolute terror, but he can't remember anything other than the suffocating fear and a mask leering out of indeterminate darkness. He lies there, breathing heavily, trying to will himself to get the light on, just get the light on and confirm there's nothing lurking in the shadows.

He rolls towards Hermione, touches her, struggling for calm. And then her arms are around him. "I'm here."

He doesn't speak, can't speak.

"It's OK. I'm OK." Somehow she knows why he's shaking. "She didn't hurt me."

And he's swallowing hard because she bloody well could have, because the wards were locked and he couldn't get in, because for 90 minutes he'd been back in the place of not knowing and because he's not sure how long it will take him to forgive his mother for this. And he's crying, great hacking sobs and he's like a fucking fish someone pulled out of the ocean, gasping for air and she's still holding onto him and he still can't quite believe that it's Hermione Granger who is keeping him from suffocating in this fear.

She's somehow gotten the lights on and he pulls away, turns away from her, unwilling to let her see his face contorted this way and, safe in the light, he slowly masters himself. Her hands are on his back, not moving, and he waits. Silence, he thinks, is such a potent gift, and he thanks every god he's ever read about, including some very nasty ones, that right at this moment she's not pushing at him to talk about his feelings.

But she's murmuring, leaning, now, against his back, so quietly he has to almost stop breathing to hear her and he realizes she's not exactly talking to him but just reciting something she'd learned by rote, something she's tucked into her mind and is sharing with him, or maybe just with herself, and he lets the words, her voice, wrap around him, a child's quilt patched together, old, worn, comforting. "Let us live and love. Vivamus atque amemus. And though the sager sorts our deeds reprove, let us not weigh them."* She breathes the words against his him then finishes, or stops, it's not a poem he knows so he's not sure, and he slumps down and lets his head fall back onto hers.

"I was so afraid she'd hurt you. When the wards went up I thought she'd lured you there to…," but he stops because to name the demon is to bring it to life.

"But she didn't. I think, Draco, that she's offering us her protection. If we want it."

"It's a bit late for protection now." He can hear her sigh, and she's wrapping her arms around him and he's leaning back into her embrace.

"Don't be daft."

He starts to trace the lettering on her arm, spelling out the obscenity. Hard to believe he'd taunted her with that for years; he can't even summon those feelings anymore. He remembers believing in those things, but he can't remember how it felt. "I hate this," he mutters.

"I don't."

"How. How can you not?"

"Because, yes, it's pain and horror and a stolen childhood, but it's also bravery and resilience. Because a deranged fanatic carved a word in my arm to teach me my place and now she's dead and I'm not. We won the war; I have books, croissants, friends, love. I'm in bed with her nephew. I win. Love wins."

"How can you be so strong?" He turns his arm so he can look at his own Mark and is startled by her laugh.

"Well, therapy helped." There's a long pause. "So do you, you know."

He's staring at the place where the wall meets the ceiling. A line. A horizon. Look at the corner and it's a convergence of three lines. Everything comes together in the end but he thinks that this time, this time if the lines break and the world falls apart again, this time he won't survive it. "If she'd hurt you, I don't know what I would have done."

"But she didn't."

But he shakes his head. "I didn't keep you safe. Don't you see, it doesn't matter that nothing happened because it could have. Because I failed you and if I fail you I lose myself." He's tracing the word, again and again. Mudblood. Mudbloodmudbloodmudbloodmudblood. "I'm so sorry for this, so so sorry…"

"It wasn't your fault. You kept us as safe as you could."

"Not safe enough, was it?" Mudbloodmudbloodmudbloodmudblood. "I'm damned to hell, already. The two-faced Janus no one wants. Let the vermin into the school, close that door. Protect the hero, close that door. I'd have sold my soul just to be safe but that was never a choice, was it? Damned for betrayal on every side and I didn't even get a kiss or the customary 30 pieces of silver."

"Draco." Her tone is sharp and she's placed her other hand over his frantically tracing fingers. "Stop."

He's breathing hard, staring at the wall, her hand over his.

"You have nothing to apologize for. You were a child. Stop. Stop hating yourself."

"If I do, how do I make up for the war? If I do, have I stopped atoning? Am I ever allowed to stop atoning?"

"That's not the way it works, I don't think. You can't make amends for things you feel you've done wrong just by despising yourself for them."

"So what do I do?"

He can feel her shrug against him. "You struggle forward every day. You try to alleviate suffering where you see it. You foster hope where there was only despair, you feed the hungry, you clothe the naked. You tell yourself that you can't bring back the dead, that you can't even heal your own broken heart, that maybe all you can do today is to tell one man that he's not alone in the darkness, but that's enough and that, maybe tomorrow, you'll be able to do a little more. And then the sun rises on the next day and you try to give yourself space to smile a little more. To enjoy the beauty that is this life, a child, a good glass of wine, a line in a poem that makes your soul open up. You laugh, and that chases away the despair and fear for a short while."

He turns, then, to face her and she takes her face in his hands and he closes his eyes and she says, like a benediction, "Give me a thousand kisses, and then a hundred, and then another thousand, for life is short and our brief light will soon set, but now, let us live and let us love."**

"A thousand kisses, you say?" he asks, his voice stronger, not strong. He's not sure he'll ever be truly strong again, but stronger.

"And then a hundred, and then another thousand."

He opens his eyes, looks at her, rumpled, creased with sleep, her eyes mostly serious though with a slight smile lifting her lips and, "I love you, Hermione Granger. I think I may die without you."

"All men die. But for now…" she leans forward and brushes his lips with her own, "let us love."

And they do.

. . . . . . . . . .

* Catullus V, loosely interspersed with a 16th century translation by Thomas Campion. The Latin literally means: "Let us live and let us love."

** More shameless mangling and repurposing of Catullus V. Really worth reading if you don't know it, though translations tend to be all over the place and the Campion one, while beautiful, is beyond loose.

. . . . . . . . . .

**Thank you all, just for reading, enjoying I hope!**

**FirstLadyOfLiterature** - _Thank you for all your reviews! I'm so glad you like the story :) I am also a huge Jane Austen fan. When I started writing this I realized I seem to have lost my copy of Pride and Prejudice, which is wholly unacceptable, and I'm giving myself one more week to look before I break down and get a new copy. My bookshelves are, perhaps, not as organized as one might hope._

**duma**_ – Thank you, as always! _

**Honoria Granger**_ – I share your Narcissa love. Though I am busy hiding under a rock for that "to join Draco and I" gaffe. Thank you for pointing it out, even if I may die of shame. Better that than people reading it and not bothering to point it out. *shudder* _

**LoveYourStory123**_ – Thank you!_

**ArwenUndomiel16**_ - Thank you. Do you think it doesn't work? I was trying to strengthen the idea of Draco and Hermione's friends as friendly but you may be right that that's pretty publicly vulnerable for Draco. Tell me truly, because if it could do with a rewrite I'd like to hear it. (And if you, or anyone, would consent to read a re-write privately I would be very grateful.)_


	19. Chapter 19 - Trembling in Her Passion

**A/N: Smut, essentially unimportant to the plot, but this smut structurally has to happen before the next smut, which is at least moderately necessary to moving the story along and getting it to the final chapter, eventually. All of which is to say that if adult content isn't your thing, skipping this won't end up confusing you in later chapters.**

**. . . . . . . . . . **

"Tie me up," she says, reaching out to him, their old school ties dangling from her fist.

Draco's breath inhales sharply. "Why?"

"Because being held down meant being hurt and I dream about it," she says, simply, watching his face. "Because I want to be helpless when I know you'll stop if I ask. I want not being able to get away to mean pleasure instead of pain."

He reaches his hands out to touch her shoulders and slides them gently down her arms, never looking away from her eyes. At a point slightly above her wrists he suddenly jerks her towards him and wrenches her arms, hard, behind her back. He bends down and, with her arms pinned and her body pulled against him, begins to kiss roughly at her neck. He grazes his teeth along her shoulder, scraping the flesh, sucks along the edge of her ear. She feels his breath grow ragged and, held as she is against him, feels the strain of his erection pushing against her. "Stop" she says.

He immediately lets her go and steps sharply back. She watches his eyes. He's watching her, assessing to check if she is all right. "Again," she says.

Instead of grabbing her arms, he puts both hands in her hair and yanks hard, pulling her up against him again. She gasps and feels the pulse start to race in her throat. He lowers his mouth to hers and kisses her, savagely, first biting at her lip and then thrusting his tongue deep within her mouth. He breaks the kiss and she's adrift, bereft of his mouth, and he's growling, "If you really do want to play this game, Miss Granger, I think you'd better get used to the idea that you don't get to give the orders," and he slams his mouth back down onto hers and, letting go of her hair with one hand, reaches down and yanks her skirt up so it is bunched around her waist. His hand thrusts down, past the waist of her knickers, not, she remembers with a sudden flush of mortification, especially nice ones, and she feels a finger thrust into her, then two, and, with that, all thoughts of feminine vanity about her wardrobe drop from her mind.

He takes that hand and wipes it, coated, on her blouse and begins to back her towards his bedroom. He bends her backwards, arching over the bed, lets her go and she scrambles up towards the headboard. Somehow the school ties are in his hand and he is tying first one wrist and then the other to the bed frame. Once he's done he leans forward and begins to unbutton her shirt. She can feel his breath on her skin, hot and rapid. With the shirt opened, he unhooks the bra, pulls it open and fastens his mouth on one nipple. She gasps and wrenches her body up towards him and then his other hand is on the other nipple and she stiffens beneath his touch. He sits back and is looking at her, flushed, skirt bunched to her waist, shirt open, bra shoved up, wrists tied to the bed and says, very softly, "You have no idea how wanton you look, Hermione. And I think I very much like the idea of taking all the time I want to play with your body."

He's stopped to pull her shoes off, take her knickers down. He's trailing a finger up the inside of her leg, laughing as she widens her legs and deliberately moves his fingertips to the side before he reaches her and she thinks she might die or kill him. He's tracing those fingers – oh gods those fingers - up over her hip and finally he's resting his hand at her waist. She can hear herself moan, her eyes are tightly closed, and he's lowered his mouth to her stomach, right up under the bunched up skirt, softly kissing her skin and moving his mouth ever southward. Her breathing has begun to hitch and she's making tiny whimpering sounds that turn into a sharp gasp when he fastens his mouth onto her and begins to suck, to run his tongue around her, to thrust it into her. She moans his name and he stops and she opens her eyes, miserable, and sees him watching her.

"Beg for me," he orders, flicking his fingers across her, tracing them across her thighs. "Beg me, Hermoine." He licks his thumb and begins to move it back and forth across one nipple while he uses the other to tease her.

"I…" she gasped. "Please."

He stops touching her, briefly, to pull off his jeans. "I think you can do better than that, Hermione. The brightest witch of your age? Beg me." He flicks her again, quickly, with one finger, and lowers his head to run his tongue along the inside of her thigh."

"You. Are. An. Evil. Little. Ferret." she spits out even as she thrusts her hips into his face. He laughs.

"Tsk. That's not begging. Try harder."

"Please…."

He rewards her for that, briefly, with his tongue, his hands grabbing hard at her hips and pinning her still. Then, "That hardly even exceeds expectations, Miss Granger." Lick. "Surely you can manage something a little more… outstanding." Lick. She's pulling against the ties, straining, and then…

"PLEASE Draco. Please please please please please please…"

And he's hauling himself up, sliding into her and she feels herself shudder and contract around him almost as soon as he enters, she's making a guttural noise, deep in her throat, her arms are pulling hard at the ties and there are going to be bruises, and he's thrusting into her and she's coming in great waves that are pulling her under and she's not just swimming anymore but being pulled along and along and along and she watches him lose himself, as she had been lost, caught in a haze of desire and release, and then he's shuddering and lowering himself, his hands on either side of her, bracing himself, his head bent forward over her, his hair in his eyes, done.

Breathing hard, he releases her hands and she wraps her fingers in his hair as they turn into one another and then she's lying beside him, against him, languorous and sated. As is he. He draws a finger along her hip. "You're OK?"

She thinks. It's a real question and deserves a real answer, a thoughtful answer beyond the obvious one of her orgasm.

"The very first moment you had me pinned I was terrified; being almost powerless like that, well, that was harder than I'd expected. But it was… it was also really good. Seeing how much you like it is a definite bonus but," she pauses and seems to search for how to explain. "When you hold me down I feel like I cannot breathe and my heart leaps and everything within me starts to melt. I'm just nothing but this helpless craving for you, your touch, and even the fear just intensifies the wanting."

"Truly?"

"Truly. It took, how to explain, it took, or it takes, the edge off the fear of being pinned down, made it a manageable thing, a thing about desire instead of… terror. '_Trembling in my passion, I'll call it balm_, *' I suppose." She fumbles with her skirt, smoothing the bunched fabric, which, now that she's not wild for him, she's noticing is actually rather uncomfortable wadded under her waist.

He laughs. "You are the only woman in the world who would quote poetry to explain her own perverse desires."

"Well," she finished adjusting the skirt and turns to look at him from under her lashes. "I like books almost as much as I like you."

. . . . . . . . . .

* A misquote from Shakespeare's _Venus and Adonis_. The actual line is, "And, trembling in her passion, calls it balm."

. . . . . . . . . .

_**Cat130**__ – Thank you so much!_

**Darc-lover**_ – If you're reading with a 4-month-old we are soul sisters, and I'm so flattered I've made the cut for your reading time. I know that fic (Nietzsche Classes) and I'm blushing to be compared to it. :)_

**TheJesusFreak777**_ - Thank you so much! And, yeah, he really does :)_

**Honoria Granger**_ – I promise not to actually die of shame. Thank you, as always, for your reviews. I cannot tell you how I appreciate them!_

**SopranoandBass**_ - Hah! I almost didn't update today because I spent so much time writing stuff that didn't WORK. Gah! One of the two awkwardest Latin classes of my life revolved around Catullus 16; I had a prof go on, at some length, about the wonders of the specific Latin sexual vocabulary, which he translated to a wholly female class using the English "fuck." We were all about 20 and so mortified. In retrospect, it still seems moderately creepy; he had a creepy vibe. And I admit I hadn't thought of the GoT reference. (I read the first 3 books so quickly, slogged throough book 4, and finally tossed my hands up halfway through book 5 and declared it too slow to finish andI've never watched the series.) It just seemed to flow. LOL._

**Geormioned**_ – I love your loquacity. :) Thank you so much; alas, given that for you to bear my children we'd have to go through an unpleasant egg donation cycle, complete with hormone injections, we'd probably best not. But I think I might love you :P_

**Guest**_ – Thank you so much for your review. That wording suggestion was really helpful. I didn't mean for it to be an ambiguous speaker at that point and I changed "She" to "Hermione" to try to make that clearer. I am going to try to rework this chapter a bit this week, however, and I have a beta I've roped into reviewing it for me. I think the "Draco wouldn't have run to Harry" critique was dead on and it needs… tweaking. And, as always, thank you for your thoughtful reviews! I really really appreciate them._

**Other Guest**_ – Thank you so very very much! I'm so glad you liked it!_


	20. Chapter 20 - The Beach

**A/N: More smut in the second half. If such is not something you care for, when they start talking about pottery you should skip to the end; I've added a tl;dr summary of the plot point embedded in the naughty bits. **

. . . . . . . . .

He takes her out the beach at midnight; they apparate in and stumble, suppressing guilty laughter at getting away with something forbidden that's also so very trivial. The path leads down to the sand, winding past trees growing at angles and, once, he lifts her up and over a fallen branch and finally they reach the sand.

Now, lying in the sand, one hand behind his head, other hand entwined with hers, her head on his chest, Draco listens to the water.

"Tell me something true," she says.

"The square root of 81 is nine."

She hits him in the side. "I meant about you."

"You didn't specify. And now, I believe, it is your turn."

"You little cheater. Tell me and live," and she's twisted in the sand and something is pressing against his head and before he even hears the laughter, before he even registers that this is Hermione, that this is the present, that she's teasing him, that's she's holding a stick and not her wand, he's knocked the stick out her hand and has her pinned on the sand, in the dark, his forearm at her throat, his own wand at her temple. They lie there like that for a long moment and he jerks back, stumbling out an apology. Then, "That last year, when you were captured, I was doing combat training most days. And sometimes not training."

Her hand reaches out in the dark night, gropes for his. He takes it, holds on.

"I think," she says at last, "I liked the square root better."

"It is what it is."

"I wish it weren't."

"And if wishes were horses, beggars would ride."

It's quiet after that. She shifts closer to him and he can hear the sand move under her feet, can hear her jumper rub against his shirt as she settles back down against his side, can hear her breathing.

He finally starts talking. "When I was a child, before going off to school, before rivalries and failing, before anything, I used to go out at night at the Manor and lie on the lawn and look up at the stars. My mother would come with me and we would lie there and she would show me the constellations. Draco. Orion. Andromeda. You can't see Andromeda yet, it's still too early in the year, but Draco never sets, did you know that? There." And he points, drawing a line with his finger from Ursa Major to the line of stars that curved around the bear. "It can be hard to find, though, because it's so faint."

"I think I can find it."

"I loved Astronomy before… everything."

"We could get a telescope, if you wanted. Watch the stars."

"Fat lot of good that would do us in London," he frowns, discontented, and shifts in the sand. "Besides, you owe me two."

"Two what? Telescopes?"

"I told you two things. Your turn, but you," he pulls hard on her arm and yanks her, sideways so she's up on his lap, her back pressed into him, "owe me two. Or three, but I'll settle for two. I'm generous like that." He slips his hands under her jumper, resting them across her abdomen and feeling the rise and fall of her breathing.

"Gods, Malfoy, not on the beach," she mutters.

He actually shudders. "Sand everywhere. No thank you. Sounds romantic and passionate in theory but, in actuality…"

"….gritty."

"Exactly." He tightens his arms around her and rests his cheek on her shoulder. "I just like feeling your skin, relax. And it's still your turn."

"Seven sixes is 42."

"That's one."

"And I love you."

He feels that seep into him, in the darkness. "You're an idiot, then."

"I'm not. I've been tested."

"I _hurt _you. I could have _killed_ you. To love someone who does that, fuck, Hermione. It's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of."

"I held a stick to your head and pretended I was going to hex you. In the dark. It was, in retrospect, probably not the smartest thing I've ever done." She reaches up to rub at her throat. "I had no idea your reflexes were so… honed. I won't do it again."

"How can you sit here, after that, and tell me…"

"… because I do." She turns in his lap and puts her hands over his mouth, both of them pressing lightly against his lips, bidding him not speak. "It takes a lot more than you to frighten me, Draco Malfoy, and, besides, you're not nearly as scary as you think you are. Plus," and even in the dark he can tell her lips have curled into that transparent I'm-trying-to-manipulate-you smile that, raised around any number of vicious, subtle games, he finds adorable, "I need you, remember. We have a fair exchange of favors here. You keep me from waking, screaming, and in return I love you."

"This rushing-in-where-angels-fear-to-tread bravery complex is going to get you killed."

"If it does, you can take vengeance."

"You think you're kidding." And his arms tighten, pulling her in until she mutters "can't breathe" and he let's go. A little bit.

. . . . . . . . . .

He sits looking at the print, the terrifying, beautiful and sad print Hermione hung above her mantle. The morning unwinds towards afternoon before she moves from his room into the kitchen, turns on the kettle, and he watches the light hit her hair through the window as she fishes a tea bag from the bin and he wonders about the beauty of an ordinary life, the simple joys. About being happy. About being loved.

"You ate all the croissants."

"You slept in. Lazy."

"Prat." But she smile she sends him belies the word. Ordinary life.

. . . . . . . . .

"There's a house," he says at last. "More of a cottage. On the shore up in East Anglia." She's looking at him, waiting for him to get to the point. "Well," he runs his hand through his hair, "I assume it wasn't sold or confiscated. I haven't checked. It's in the middle of nowhere, you have to apparate in every damn time, and no one can ever find you, not even with detailed instructions, but we could go. Get a telescope."

"I'd like that."

He cocks his head at her and raises his eyebrows. "I could give it to you."

"I think I can just share your telescope, Draco, it's OK."

"Don't be so fucking dense, Granger. The COTTAGE."

"You can't give me a cottage. It's too much."

"I can give you anything I want! Why won't you let me take care of you, even a little?"

"You do take care of me. You keep the nightmares at bay, you buy me breakfast." A sudden grin. "If you want to take care of me, stop eating all the croissants." She's walking over to him where he's seated, kissing the top of his head and he buries his face into her.

"Maddening woman."

"You like me, though."

"Oh, I do, I really do."

. . . . . . . . . .

"We could go to one of those paint-your-own-pottery places. I think that would be fun."

"I'll never be that desperate for sex, Hermione." He turns a page. He's doing that infuriating thing where he doesn't even look up from his book, as though no mere mortal could possibly sustain his interest and she's feeling more and more annoyed. "Hmm. Did you know there are 23 more erogenous zones on a woman's body than a man's?"

"What are you reading?"

"Something that, alas, your interest in painting lumpy tea mugs seemingly renders moot." Still not looking up. "Enjoy your mugs."

She glares at him and stomps out the door.

. . . . . . . . . .

"I thought you were out doing some tedious muggle crafty thing," Draco looks at the bag she's tossed down.

"Just some shopping."

"For what?" 

"Something your lack of interest in lumpy tea mugs, alas, renders moot." And she's picking up her dictionary and pulling out her gloves and starting to translate that damned manuscript again.

"Are you trying to manipulate me, Hermione?"

And she looks back at him, her face a mask of perfect innocence except for that giveaway sparkle in her eye. "I'm working over here; there's a complicated bit where the noun is unexpectedly irregular and I want to figure out why. Could you keep it down?"

And he does, for at least forty minutes, watching her and idly passing the knickers, the very nice knickers, she'd purchased from one hand to another. Her shoulders slowly hunch over in concentration and it's a wonder to watch her lose herself in thought as she shifts from teasing him to being truly absorbed in the work. She's going back from the manuscript to a grammar, to her notebook, to the dictionary, making notes, then fewer notes, then just staring at the text. He can tell she's stuck when she pushes the chair back.

"I bet I could make you forget that manuscript."

"Oh, I doubt you could," she sounds distracted, crossing the room towards a pile of books on the counter. "I'm in the middle of a really tricky set of nested subordinate clauses and…"

"Is that a dare, Hermione?" He walks to meet her, cups her chin in his hand and laughs as her eyes flash at him. "Are you daring me to be more interesting than _grammar_?" He's amused and incredulous but she's oh-so-slowly smiling at him. Maybe, even, smoldering at him.

"You," she says, oh-so-casually crossing her arms behind her back even as her voice throws his challenge back at him, "will never…"

And with that he's backing her up against the table until the weight of her body pins her wrists against her body, his one hand holding her chin with greater pressure, his other reaching under her skirt to stroke the outside of her knickers ever so lightly. "Oh, I think I will. It's just a matter of how long you can hold out." He can hear her breathing shorten, feel dampness beginning seeping through the thin fabric.

"But we should make it a sporting wager, hmm? Resist me for, oh, 20-minutes and I'll let you work on your subordinate clauses with no further molestation. I'll even go and paint your hideous pottery with you." Her pupils are already dilating, he can see her pulse throb in her throat and her mouth has opened. He thinks how unfair this really is, but he's always been happy to cheat at games. He presses her harder into the table, feels a thrill run through him as she closes her eyes and arches out, relieving the strain on her pinioned wrists even as she thrusts herself more thoroughly into his fondling hand. "Naughty," he murmurs. "It's like you're not even trying. Come, little plaything, let's get you to the bed. I don't happen to feel like bruising my knees on the floor today." He drops her chin, pulls his hand away and watches her body sag even as he grabs her hair in his fist and yanks her towards the bedroom door.

When he tosses her towards the bed and she stumbles and lies there he wonders if he's gone too far, especially after the incident at the beach, and steps forward, hand reaching out, and then she's turned to face him, propping herself up on one elbow, head tilted, gleam in her eye and says, "You're on, ferret. And if you win?"

"You let me give you the shore cottage. Hold out for 20-minutes with no orgasm and I'll paint pottery with you. Come before that and, well, you take the cottage, no pottery for me, and I think I want you to wear those new knickers to dinner. "

"You drive a hard bargain."

"Hard, is it?" He raises an eyebrow.

"You tell me."

"Shall we start the clock?"

She lowers her chin, looks up at him and he approaches her. Game on. A gentle finger is sliding down her arm and she inhales but doesn't move and he's tugging her out of her top, unhooking the bra, careful to only let the tips of his fingers graze across her skin. With each hint of a touch she grows even more still save the rapid rise of her chest, save the throb of her pulse and once he's stripped her completely he stands back to look. Gods, but she's beautiful.

She holds her hands out, mute appeal in those wide eyes. "Not today, pet." And he's looping one tie around a convenient spot in the center of the headboard. "Hold this; this is, after all, all about your self control." And she's sliding up the mattress, reaching over her head to grasp the fabric, looping it around her hands. "And you do have self control, don't you?" He's sliding his fingers, lightly, oh so lightly, along the length of her body, feeling her muscles tighten as she sets her shoulders, closes her eyes. He's tracing down her arm again, along her side, over her hip. Drawing small circles on her stomach, around her breasts until he coaxes just the smallest of hitching sobs from her.

"Malfoy…"

"Planning to concede already? But we've only just started." And, as she swallows hard, her throat convulsing, he lowers his lips to her skin and retraces the lines he's drawn with his fingers, kissing the insides of her arms, swirling his tongue around her the curve of her hip. She's trying so hard not to move that her muscles are utterly rigid and when he moves his mouth to the inside of her thigh she almost jumps. He laughs, low in his throat, and then, as he moves down her leg, just running his lips over her skin she groans and he laughs again. "You wanted something?"

"I hate you."

"Mmm." He moves up her leg again and, finally, glides his fingers lightly over her and she starts to make a soft, high-pitched whimper. "How very, very wet you are tells me otherwise. I think you might like me very much indeed." He's runs his finger in slow, lazy loops over her, gauging how close she is to losing control and then, before she comes, pulls his hand away. "Of course, I can stop."

"I… I…"

She's still holding onto the strip of cloth, her hair hanging over her eyes, her mouth open, her breath coming in uneven hitches that shudder out of her."

"There was something about 'nested subordinate clauses' you were concerned about. Why don't you tell me about those?" He's shucking off his clothing and watching her struggle for words.

"I… They… It's…"

"There are a lot of pronouns in them?" He lays next to her now and walks his fingers up from her hip, along her ribs. When he stops to lightly touch a nipple she shudders in a breath and opens her glazed eyes to stare at him. He traces her fingers around her lips, brushes her hair out of her eyes, which she closes as she says, in a very small voice, "I concede."

"I'm sorry, I don't think I heard that." But he's kneeling above her, rubbing himself along her, and she mutters, "You win, OK," and with that he lowers himself, very slowly, into her. She's let go of the tie and has her arms around him and he's fairly sure he's going to need to clean some blood up when they're done the way her fingernails are cutting across his back as he rides her but he really doesn't care because desire, held carefully in abeyance as he'd teased her, is flaring upward within him and, even as he watches her own face shift into the throes of orgasm and feels her hips rock against him, he is, himself, climaxing and calling out her name.

"I believe," he says, afterwards, sweat-soaked hair hanging in his eyes, laughing, "that the cottage is yours and I am forever spared the ignominy of muggle crafts."

"Prat." But her smile, again, belies the words and he takes his thumb and draws it across her mouth, tracing the lines of that smile, breathing hard. Ordinary. Unforeseen. Irreplaceable.

. . . . . . . . . . .

**A/N:**

**tl;dr **Hermione and Draco have sex, wherein he persuades her to accept the gift of the shore cottage.

**Guest**_ - Thank you! I'm glad you liked it!_

**Dracosgirl007**_ – Thank you so much!_

**happybird11**_ – Hah! I'm glad you liked my detailed smut warning. I spent much of the weekend writing stuff that happens further out and fighting with the overall structure of the story arc and it was nice to take a little "plot? What plot?" break._


	21. Chapter 21 - Night (no Mare) Interlude

It's still early enough when he wakes that he can't even really call it the _middle_ of the night yet, but he didn't wake screaming and he thinks that's at least something. Her arm is splayed out across the bed, fingers just brushing his arm, and he thinks with fond irritation that Hermione is rather like a cat in her ability to take up an entire bed.

This is… this is _so_ good and he'd forgotten what good felt like, what good even _was _other than hard and fast trysts with women whose names he'd forget by morning, other than that sharp feeling of indifference to everything he could find two glasses into good liquor.

What does it mean to be good?

He sighs, and looks up at the ceiling. That wretched ball is soon, his infuriating, beloved mother has some agenda of her own and he suspects that Hermione knows at least something of what it is, though she's kept her own counsel on the matter.

Hermione, he knows, has _made_ him be happy through the sheer force of her rather indomitable will, with her love, by insisting he stop using people's scorn to flagellate himself, by pulling him out of himself and towards her.

The sex is nice too.

Is it enough to be happy?

Is it enough?

. . . . . . . . .

**A/N - More of an interlude than a full-fledged chapter, I realize. More later, but the more wants to be alone.**


	22. Chapter 22 - The Dinner & Its Aftermath

Afterward they would acknowledge the restaurant had been a mistake. "That," Draco would say, even years later, "really was a bad idea."

Once the sting of the entire evening had passed, Hermione would quip, "And I wore good knickers, too." Of course, it would take a long time for the sting to pass and by the time it had they were both very different people.

"Mr. Malfoy, a pleasure," the _maître d'_ had said, leading them to a table. It had been so deceptively relaxing to go out in wizarding London, to not worry about hiding wands, hiding magic. If Draco had begun to notice people letting their eyes slide over the table where he and Hermione were sitting he'd tried not to let her see it, keeping her laughing and engaged with anecdotes about quiddich accidents gone horribly awry and questions about her manuscript. He'd thought, or at least hoped, he later admitted bitterly to himself, that he could get her safely through dinner and home, if not fully ignorant of the opinion being tacitly passed around some tables via glance and quietly murmured, non-committal, words, than at least not explicitly confronted with it.

He'd thought wrong.

"Mr. Malfoy." The man hadn't even had the grace to look discomfited by his bland speech. "I'm afraid we will be unable to accommodate your dining plans this evening. In deference to your family's long patronage of this establishment, the chef has agreed to make up a bag for you to take home."

"I beg your pardon." Draco had watched Hermione place both hands flat on the table, controlling herself as she spoke. The manager hadn't even looked at her. It was as if he, Draco, were alone at the table.

"I would appreciate it, sir, if you wouldn't make a scene."

"If you were to refuse me service, a scene would be the least of your concerns," Draco had spoken coolly but hadn't bothered to lower his voice.

"Lucius Malfoy's son would always be welcome in our establishment, either alone or with a suitable companion."

"Do you know who I am?" Hermione had hissed.

"I know what you are, Miss Granger."

"No," Draco had said. "I really don't think you do." And he'd exhaled. So be it. "You won't like how this plays out." And he'd stood, held his hand out, and Hermione had taken it.

They'd been stopped when they were not quite at the door. "Miss Granger," the woman had said, and Draco had braced himself for something keenly poisonous, for some cold little aside designed to brutalize, but the woman had only said, as if nothing untoward had just occurred, as if half the restaurant hadn't watched them be asked to leave with glee no less smug for being concealed, "I understand you'll both be at the Ministry ball next week. Would you be so kind, Miss Granger, as to give me a moment of your time when you're there?"

Hermione had just looked at her, said with no expression, "I would be delighted," and then they'd walked out.

On the stoop Draco had reached down and kissed her, deeply and at length as the whole restaurant had watched. Only in that contact had he been able to feel how rigid was her spine, how she'd held herself tightly rather than leaning into him as she usually did. "How about some take-away curry instead," was all he'd said.

. . . . . . . . . .

When they get home after the disastrous evening, she eats the curry in silence then says, with no expression, "I think I'll work on some translation issues I've been having," and he nods, pulls some parchment out and begins writing letters, careful, concise letters while they sit at separate tables, both working, neither speaking.

. . . . . . . . .

She takes a sleeping potion that night. He sits and watches her for a long time. What does it mean to be good? He thinks about the abdication of responsibility and about seven years spent in a bottle or an unmemorable bed. He thinks about his mother, carefully holding the web of family influence in her hands, waiting to hand it back to him. He wonders if he will still be worth loving if he takes it.

. . . . . . . . . .

He saves her croissants in the morning. She takes one, takes the cup of tea he hands her, and breaks her fast in silence. Then she says, in a voice so small it barely reaches him, "I think next time I'd prefer a different restaurant."

He runs his hand through his hair. "I shouldn't have taken you there. I didn't know it would be … like that. I didn't think. I'm just… I'm so sorry, Hermione."

"You don't get to be sorry," she whispers. "You don't get to be sorry for what someone else did." She almost smiles. "I thought we'd been through this already."

"Hermione," pleading now, across the table. "'Let us take the warnings of those old men and count them as nothing'*, right?"

She's so still. So very, very still. And then she says, softly, "One thousand kisses, and then a hundred…"

"… and then a thousand more." She's crying and he's around the table, his arms holding her, his cheek pressed against her hair. When he looks down he can see the edge of the scar on her arm. He can see the brand on his.

. . . . . . . . . .

He spends the day going through letters, files. Sorting things out.

"What are you doing?"

He shrugs, still writing. "I've decided to take a more hands-on approach to handling the family holdings and it seems prudent to reallocate some resources."

"Oh." He looks up and she's studying him, watching him, seeing him. "Is this what you want, Draco? Really want?"

"Want? What I want?" He snorts. "What I want is to eat good food and read interesting books. I want you on my arm as I walk down the street and I want you whimpering in my bed at night. I want to be happy. Just happy. No sane person wants" and he waves his hand over the pile of papers "this."

He pauses. "Don't expect me to wear some bloody awful knitted hat, though."

"You don't have to do this."

"Except I do." And then he's working again, feeling the steady pressure of her eyes on his down-turned head. "Hermione?" There's a long pause. "Get a good dress for that ball."

. . . . . . . . . .

She brings him a telescope as a gift. He's been working all week, bent over correspondence and balance sheets, relearning rules, and she puts the box down on top of the piles in front of him. He's felt her watching him all week. She's set take-away in front of him, slept in his arms and asked no questions. Made no demands. Now she does.

"We're going to the cottage tonight. "

"Bossy little thing, aren't you." But he's grateful for the respite.

"Always and forever." She's leaning against the table, the very picture of relaxed idleness. He wonders how much time she's been spending with his mother during the week; this much casual insouciance never bodes well for him in conversations with Narcissa. "I walked past that restaurant on the way to pick up your present. It appears to have closed. "

"Has it?" He raises his eyebrows. "Well, the customer service was fairly awful so I'm not surprised."

"You decided against subtlety, then?"

He takes her hand, turns it palm up, and presses his lips down into it. "I thought it might be best to remind certain people that not draping myself in privilege doesn't render me wholly disarmed."

"And that they should, therefore, be wary of despising you?**"

"Or anything that's mine." She's searching his eyes for something, but he doesn't say anything more and neither does she.

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It is an excellent night for star viewing and by unspoken agreement neither mentions that the ball is the following night.

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* _Catullus V_ again.

** "For among other evils which being unarmed brings you, it causes you to be despised, and this is one of those ignominies against which a prince ought to guard himself." Machiavelli's _The Prince._

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**A/N – **Thank you, all, for reading. I cannot properly express my amazement and gratitude that people take the time to read my little story. The next chapter is going to take a while; the ball is outlined but hard to get sounding even marginally right. Gah. I'm sufficiently socially inept that writing people being good at social games is not playing to my strong suit.

**shaymars**_ – I'm so glad you like it! Thank you for reviewing – reviews make my day, really truly!_

**Iseult**_ – Can I just say how much I love your user name? I've always enjoyed Tristan/Iseult more than the Arthurian stories. That said, thank you so much for your incredibly kind words. And thank you for the British correction – I've fixed that! Ugg. American English tripping me up._

**ArwenUndomiel16 **_– I'm so glad you like all my smut. :)_

**TheJesusFreak777 **_- I'm afraid sexy fun times are over for a while as our poor Draco goes back to trying to find a better path to atonement than self hate. Thank you, as always, for reviewing (even the stuff I know you aren't as crazy about – I really appreciate it and I value your feedback tremendously!)_

**Fae**_ – Thank you so much!_

**AshLiz**_ - Thank you! And thank you for reviewing. :) _

**Guest**_ – Thank you so much! (And why are you apologizing for your English – it's practically perfect!)_

**Darc-lover**_ – Thank you so much. I'm glad the smut doesn't seem pointless. It's a little weird to write it, I admit. I'm glad it comes across as character building rather than just completely random. At any rate we are, alas, moving on to less fun conflicts than consensual sex games. Thank you for the reviews – it really means a lot to me that you take the time to "converse" with me about the fic._


	23. Chapter 23 - The Ball

He's never able to remember the ball as more than a kaleidoscope of moments. There are no transitions in his recollections, just the cameras snapping and short, suffocating scenes. Her dress, the birds, his mother, Theo, cameras everywhere, things no one dares to say directly to him interspersed with sycophants, the peculiar girl with the flowers, and, finally, escape. When he tries to remember, what he recalls most clearly is Hermione's voice, whispering huskily in his ear, "I want to think again of dangerous and noble things. I want to be improbable, beautiful and afraid of nothing*" and that is, he knows, impossible because she hadn't said that, hadn't read that poem to him, until the next day, after the night is over, after the nightmare that followed. Memories fragment, reassemble, and then swirl away again to be reshaped in a pattern he knows must be false if only because it is incomplete.

. . . . . . . . . .

"You clean up nicely, Granger."

"You too," she says, not looking at him, studying her reflection with a grim line to her mouth.

"I like the dress." He steps behind her, puts his hands on her shoulders, runs them down her arms. The dress hangs onto her, cut in a complicated series of diagonal pieces that shape the pale green silk to her every curve with a scoop neck that falls in loose waves across the swell of her breasts. Gold threads woven through the fabric catch the light as she moves; the effect bewitches him, it will bewitch every man who sees her.

"Your mother picked it out." Misreading, or maybe not, his look in the reflection, she shrugs. "Told me, and I quote, that I mustn't deny her the pleasure of dressing a daughter. Told me that on the street when I tried to insist I knew how to dress myself and then took me to three shops before she was satisfied; I think she made one girl at the second shop cry."

Dressing a _what? _"Only one?"

"Plus the waitress at lunch."

"Ah. That sounds pretty typical then, other than the rather terrifying discovery that she's been taking you shopping."

"If I told you the whole of her agenda benefits you, would you believe me."

"Probably not." He sighs. "Maybe. There's always been traps within layers within plans with her." He's playing with a loose curl that has escaped her updo, right at the nape of her neck, watching goosepimples rise on her arms. He looks at her reflection, at her studying her reflection. "What do you see, pretty girl?"

"Armor."

He sighs. "True enough, that. Or you might be a weapon in some side skirmish of her own. Maybe both. That's the thing with her, I can never tell."

He runs his thumbs down her arms and meets her eyes in the reflection. "It will be OK." She shrugs, neither agreeing with him nor arguing. "Close your eyes. I have something for you." And he's fastening a chain around her neck, putting his hands over the pendant that hangs from it, watching her open her eyes. He watches her make a face as she tugs his hands away from the gift, and her eyes squint, then widen, at the necklace. It's a replica of a photo of the earth from space, recreated in tiny gem chips. "The world, as a bauble for your pretty neck."

She touches it. "This is …too much. Again."

But he's coaxed a smile from her and the tension is leaving her shoulders and now she's actually admiring her reflection. "Shall we go off and put on a show for the vulgar crowd? Upgrade my status from 'social pariah' to 'one of the good guys' whilst simultaneously telling the blood purists to go to hell? Give the masses their fill of the war heroine and the disgraced Death Eater?"

"Don't you mean the mudblood and the pure-blood princeling?"

"That works too. Come one, come all. Good times to be had by all. Step right this way, see something you'll never forget."

She shudders. "I hate large groups of people."

"Hey." He puts his hands at her waist. "We'll get in, get those pictures taken, make our point, and get out. No lingering."

"Promise?"

"Promise." Pause. "What kind of knickers do you wear under something like this, anyway? I don't feel straps or anything."

"Nothing you'd like. They start here" - she points to her navel - "and go to here." Another point, this time mid-thigh. "Like many things, the structural unpinnings of this dress are a lot less fun than the outer appearance."

. . . . . . . . . .

"Well. This is… decorated," mutters Hermione. "They certainly put out a lot of… decorations. And stuff. And… and the… the… _birds._" The room is stultifying. There are too many flowers, too many people, not enough air. A row of auction items, raising money for the cause-du-jour, sit on tables along one wall and jut out into the room, impeding what little natural flow there might be to the darting and hovering crowds. One corner near the door has been given over to a large paper sculpture of what appears to be a flock of indeterminate birds.

"Starlings."

"What?"

"It was in the description of this… event. Those things are supposed to be starlings."

"Well, if you say so."

"Come." He holds out his hand. "Those dubious starlings are where besotted couples are invited to pose for a portrait with the photographers who will be on hand from the gossip rags."

"Is that what we are? Besotted?"

He lifts her fingertips to his lips, "I didn't realize nerves make you so… hostile." And she shakes herself and poses, under paper birds swooping down, smiling for the intrusive camera.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Ron and Lavender are there, Ron holding a drink, Lavender waving to them. The two members of the golden trio are immediately together, heads down. Draco twitches.

"You get used to it," Lavender says, eyeing him.

"Really?"

"The three of them, their friendship, well, you get used to it or you leave." She looks at Draco. "You planning on leaving?"

Draco watches Ron and Hermione hugging, sees the easy way she spins around to show off her dress, catches the glare Ron sends him and returns it. "No. I'm not leaving."

"Then you'll get used to it." She summons Ron with a quick, proprietary wave and the man, with a henpecked eye roll, rejoins them, brushing past one of the photographers working the event.

Lavender loops her arm around Hermione's waist and puts her hand on Draco's shoulder while Ron stands far too close to him. "Personal space, Weasley," Draco mutters.

"You know the trick to making this work," Lavender says, too low for anyone passing by to overhear. "If you stage it, you control the narrative." Then she looks up at him and laughs as though he'd just said something utterly amusing and Draco hears the click of a shutter and can see the final picture in his mind, himself surrounded by the nation's beloved, charming and accepted. Himself, blood traitor.

Ron claps him on the shoulder. Both men smile, just two chummy blokes enjoying a party, as the cameraman snaps another picture.

. . . . . . . . . .

Draco watches several men he's known since childhood fail to recognize him. One mutters "mudblood lover" as he glides past.

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"Hermione, darling, how lovely to see you." Narcissa sweeps over, brushing her fingers across Draco's cheek, the idle caress of a loving mother, kissing Hermione's cheek. Draco watches the room without seeming to, an old trick taught him by the woman who is right now effortlessly catching all the attention; watches couples slowly turn, each as though by accident, to ensure this scene, this oh-so-public display, is in their line of sight.

"Narcissa, it's a pleasure, as always." Draco's bland smile never wavers as Hermione's words carry across the floor.

But his mother is continuing. "Thank you for the invitation. I'm sorry I haven't replied but I would, of course, be delighted to join you both for a little dinner."

"And we," he bows over her hand, "will be delighted to fête you in our simple style."

She pats him on the cheek, as if he were a charming child. "I am very happy, my dear, that you have decided to finally take over more of the day to day management of the estate. So many unfortunate things can happen when we aren't in careful control, can't they? Best to keep a hand on the reins, as it were."

Click. Another photograph. The pure-blood matriarch, her loving son, and the muggle-born witch, all smiling for the camera.

"You invited my mother to dinner?" he asks after she walks away. "When did you plan to warn me?"

"About an hour before she arrived."

"You're a wicked little thing, you know. That's not even fair."

. . . . . . . . . .

Hermione, accosted by the woman from the restaurant, appears to be listening to her with polite interest.

"Oh, don't mistake me. I am proud of my heritage, proud my grandparents were seeped in magic in the Celtic days of bloody sacrifice, but…

… the days of bloody sacrifice weren't that long ago."

"Oh, don't be naïve, child. Sacrifice is different than slaughter." A shake of the head. "A sacrifice must be made willingly or there's no magic in it. But then, you know that. Things that matter always have a price, a cost to be paid. You sacrificed your childhood for us, didn't you?"

Hermione stares at her.

A raise of the eyebrow. "You should come over and look through my library. I think you'd enjoy it. A lot of the older magics aren't taught in the schools anymore; people unfortunately tend to confuse complicated and arcane with dark but, really Miss Granger, magic is far more than not having to wash your dishes by hand or turning birds into goblets."

"Excuse me, but why are we…"

"… having this conversation? So people will see us, of course. And, unlike some, I am sensible of what you have done for this community. Remember me to Narcissa when next you see her, won't you?"

A smile, an air kiss, and she's gone.

"What was that all about?" Hermione turns helplessly to Draco but he just shakes his head and mouths, "Inbreeding."

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"Theo."

Draco's tone is carefully neutral. So is the response. "Draco."

Hermione is left out of whatever currents swirl around the pair. "I'm afraid I haven't followed your career, Mr. Nott. You'll have to tell me what you've been doing since we left school."

"Mostly keeping my head down," he shifts back onto his heels, then forward again.

"Honestly, is that what you've _all _done?" Draco can hear a hint of impatience creep into Hermione's voice and she's got her hand on her hip. "Just hide away?"

"It's…"

"…not _fair."_ She's clearly frustrated. "Why should you feel you have to hide? What _is_ it with this world and making children pay for the sins of the parents? What could you possibly have done as a _child_ to warrant having to _hide_ for years."

"I think I begin to understand the appeal," Nott mutters to Draco.

"Be careful, she'll have you in an ugly knitted hat before long," He puts a hand possessively on her shoulder only to have it shrugged off with a quick, irritated movement and a mock glare.

"My knitting is improving, thank you very much."

Nott watches the brief interplay. "I'd say the muggle-born thing's bad form, mate, but," with a clumsy bow over Hermione's hand, "I'm quite sure it's the smartest decision you've ever made."

The gallantry is so overdone and so awkward that it's almost painful but at least he's trying and Hermione seems to search for a response. "Thank you, Mr. Nott. Your charm is… charming."

At that he laughs and something shifts for all of them. "Do you ever see your father?" Draco asks, quietly.

"I go up about once a month. He barely knows me, but…" he looks guiltily at Hermione. "I feel like I should."

"I'm not going to think badly of you for visiting your father."

"Yeah, well, some people do. And some people think too well of me for it," he looks directly at Draco when he adds that.

"Mr. Nott…"

"…Theo, please." A grimace, and, "Mr. Nott is my father, not me."

"Theo, then. Would you like to come over some time?"

The man looks at her and Draco tenses until, "That would be nice. It would be… nice… to see Draco again. Get to know you."

. . . . . . . . . .

A woman brushes by them, Draco hears the words "Death Eater whore" and then, before he can respond, a quiet voice carrying under the crowd, still audible. "But that's not what he is." A blond woman he vaguely recognizes who has, for some completely opaque reason, woven what looks like nightshade into her hair, smiles at them. "Hullo, Hermione."

Why does Hermione seem to have a friend wearing a toxic weed in her hair? At a party? Gods, he hopes this isn't another drunken pure-blood who's going to ramble on about sacrifice and the misbegotten Celts, of all things.

. . . . . . . . . .

"I think," he mutters, "that our work here is done. More than done. Let's escape while we can, before another imbecile corners us. Please."

She sags into him, "What a perfect idea."

The Minster, passing by with an elderly woman holding his arm, overhears her. "What's a perfect idea, my dear?"

"Draco was just saying to me that he's considering endowing a research position at St. Mungo's." He digs his hand into her hip but her social smile never falters. He wonders whether he has the energy left to make her pay for this tonight. Probably not.

"Oh, that's a _wonderful_ idea," the dowager gushes. She actually gushes. His head is starting to hurt and he finds himself wondering whether 'unforgivable"' isn't, perhaps, always totally unforgivable. Surely people would understand he's been toad-eaten one too many times tonight. "The hospital always needs more patrons!"

"I'm so sorry," murmurs Hermione. "I'm not sure we've met."

"Frances Blishwick. And you _must_ be Miss Granger. _Dear_ Narcissa's told me _all_ about you. Draco, _darling_, send me your idea. We'd _love_ to have you on board. Money always talks, dear boy, crass as it is to admit it." He grits his teeth, smiles at the woman and refrains from saying that he would happily defer to her expertise with regards to 'crass'.

Before they, mercifully, move away, a reporter from the Prophet snaps the four of them, Hermione leaning into Draco, his protective hand at her waist, the two of them exchanging pleasantries with the Minister and his elderly, pure-blood companion.

. . . . .

* Misquote from _Starlings in Winter_ by Mary Oliver. "I want / to think again of dangerous and noble things. / I want to be light and frolicsome. / I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing, / as though I had wings." I discovered this poem writing this chapter via the sophisticated method of googling "poems about starlings" and think I have pretty much fallen in love with it and went off and bought the volume of poetry it was originally printed in so I could linger over more of Mary Oliver.

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_**A/N As always, thank you everyone for reading. It's an ongoing thrill that people are actually reading what I write for fun. I've tried to respond to all reviews since the last chapter was posted and if I missed you it was because I suck, not because I didn't smile like a maniac that you commented when I read your review. **_

** . **_ - Thank you so much. I am, as you can see, slowing down. I got sucked back into Pride and Prejudice trying to get even a vague sense for "people communicating in social code". And I'm glad you don't find the adult scenes simply laughable; you write them so well I take that as a huge compliment._

**DobbyRocksSocks**_ - Thank you so much for reviewing :)_

**PhoenixflIight**_ – Thank you!_

**Honoria Granger**_ – I didn't actually write their shopping trip; you'll have to imagine Narcissa making hapless clerks and waitresses cry. I did shamelessly indulge in some dress porn with the bias cut dress and I wish I could draw. Or sew. But I can, alas, do neither. However, dinner with Narcissa is coming. _

**Darc-lover**_ – True enough, but I still enjoy your comments and insights and appreciate that you do them!_

**TheJesusFreak777**_ – It's interesting you say that because I was thinking specifically about the Jim Crow south when I wrote that. It's really a loathsome mindset._

**NightshadePrincess**_ - Thank you. I know that some of the "nightmare" chapters are really short but I do want them to remain these kind of self-contained units, apart from the rest of the story._

**Btterflykiss69**_ – Thank you!_

**happybird11**_ - Thank you :) And thank you for the really thoughtful review. I do love Narcissa, in all her bitchy "don't mess with my family" glory even if, canonically, she's also a horrid, elitist snob._

**FirstLadyOfLiterature**_ – Thank you for all your lovely reviews! I love them! (If a spelling/grammar thing jumps out at you please don't hesitate to tell me; one of the bad things about proofreading your own work is that you start to see the comma where it should be rather than where it is!)_

**ainokea2810**_ - Thank you! :)_


	24. Chapter 24 - Nightmare 6

In the dream she's falling into an oubliette, starlings swooping and diving around her, falling down, falling while voices call out "Death Eater whore" and laugh. She remembers reading, when her eyes open, when she's awake, remembers with a clinical detachment even as she's shaking, that you never hit the ground when you fall in a dream. And it's true, she never hit. She just fell and fell and fell and now her eyes are open and her heart is racing and she's never made a sound, just fallen and fallen until she fell right out of sleep and into the dark room. And somehow, of course, he knows, and his hand is brushing her hair back, taking her fingers in his own. "Was it a bad one?"

Yes, she thinks to herself. It was a bad one. It was the worst one. Dreaming that crazy women sliced her open, tortured her, that wasn't, when you thought about it, so bad. Oh, it was bad. It was, truthfully, very bad. It was seven years of screaming in the night bad. But it was something that had been done _to_ her. This, this was something she was doing to herself. She had agency here. She had made a choice to love Draco Malfoy, of all people. And he'd warned her. That son-of-a-bitch had actually warned her. "People will hate you," he'd said. But had she listened? No, she was the untouchable war heroine and she'd thought nothing could change that. Nothing could ever repay her for giving her childhood to these people, these people who, even now, still had the bloody _nerve_ to judge her for being born to non-magical parents, and they _owed_ her. You people _owe_ me, she thinks. I saved you. How dare you. How _dare_ you. If I want Draco Malfoy in my bed, in my life, she thinks, then I will bloody well have him and you will smile and you will thank for me being your godsdamned oblation and you will keep your condemnation to yourselves, thank you very much.

That is, of course, way too much to say. Instead, all she says is, "Do you think I'm a whore?" What a ridiculous thing to ask. She knows, she thinks she knows, what he'll say, of course. No man with any sense would tell his lover, "Why, yes, now that you mention it, I do actually think of you as a paid sex worker." Still, she wants the easy reassurance. She wants to hear him say, "No." She's shaky and furious and scared and she can still feel the sensation of falling through flocks of birds and she wants to hear him tell her the epithets whispered at her aren't true.

That makes the long silence after her question almost unbearable. She would claim it was literally unbearable but, as she's lying there in the dark silence, bearing it, that would be false.

Finally he says, "Why would you let them do that to you?" and she's lost and so she says nothing and the silence of him _not _saying she isn't a whore hangs over them longer. Finally, "Someone just wanted to… to.. demean you. To make you nothing more than your body and then say that even that is worthless and dirty because of me. Really, to imply you're, well, a collaborator, that you've betrayed them, betrayed your own side. That you've sold out. You are so much smarter than that. Too smart to fall for that. You aren't just some… thing…. that I can contaminate. You aren't some traitor to the light because you sleep with me."

"It hurt," she mutters, still angry, a little irritated he's not just giving her the easy 'no' but also shockingly grateful for the very peculiar and unexpected gift of this man, grateful for the complex, thoughtful answer, grateful that he seems angry on her behalf.

"They wanted it to." He sighs, holds her fingers tighter. "Just… don't give them that. "

She's silent for a while and they lie there; he's twining his fingers in and around hers and she's staring at the golden patch on the ceiling. Finally, "It's a pretty shitty fucking thing to call someone."

"Yeah."

"And those birds were just awful." She's not sure if she's changing the subject, maybe not, but, of course, he can't know that, can't know that dreams and sculpture are all tangled up in her head.

"They were," he says. "How about that woman going on and on about the Celts?"

"She was bizarre and possibly insane." She lets him nudge her away from her dream, tease her back into laughing about safe things, about things that don't cut you, don't cut into you, things that don't leave marks.

"Welcome to the wonderful world of what can happen when you marry your cousins too often. 'Magic,'" he mimics, in a high screech, "'is more than turning goblets into birds, my pretty.'"

He pauses, considering, then adds, "Though that would explain that paper sculpture thing."

"What?"

"Maybe it started out as a pile of broken cups. Not everyone does well in every area of magical study, you know. We should be kind." He pitches his tone to that of a schoolmaster judging the work of a wholly inadequate student, one not even worth correcting, and in the darkness she starts to giggle and then they're both in the grips of hysteria, gasping "broken teapots" and "plates from the cafeteria" and "forks! There have to have been forks for the claws!"

When they finally stop coming up with increasingly absurd things that might have been transformed into the unfortunate bird sculpture, when they are lying there, settling down, calm again, he asks, quietly, "Feel better?"

She sighs. "That terror in the dark feeling is gone, chased away. I'm mostly angry, I guess. Resentful. I miss believing that if you are just good and noble and sincere everything will work out and everyone will love you."

"I wish it worked that way."

"Yeah, well, it doesn't." She rolls onto her hip, props herself up and looks at him, the outline of him, in the dark, lying on the bed, in the bed, in the bed with her. He's partially silhouetted against the window with that hair backlit by the streetlights. "I should be allowed to be with you, with anyone, without some drone of a functionary sitting in judgment. 'How dare they,' I guess is what I'm thinking. If I, honored war hero, say you're good enough than you should be good enough. Absurdly self-important, really."

"Well, I doubt anyone's going to come along and turn you into a spider for your hubris so it's all good." He pauses. "You are so much like my mother it's terrifying."

"Beg pardon?"

"She fully believes that since she accepts you, everyone must. Everyone will. And, mostly, it's true. Witness Theo, who's probably never spoken to a muggle-born before, unless he's giving her his dinner order. And it's mostly true for you, too. You don't think your Weasley friends would give me the time of day without you, do you? Not that I really care because they're gallant idiots with too many exhausting children, but the point stands. They tolerate my existence because you make them."

"They do have a lot of children," she agrees, leaving the rest alone. It's too hard, too raw, to push at the ways she's angry, at the way she resents being hated for something she's done, something she thinks should be wholly personal, not a cat toy batted around from the claws of blood-purists to people who seem to think she needs to stay on their pedestal, conform to their own, rigid, notions of purity. How she's irritated, also, at being made human for some, being made worthy, by means of Narcissa's say so, even if she's done the same thing to Draco. For Draco.

"The Weasleys are all really… fertile, aren't they?" he's continuing. "One child is better."

"Oh yes; one I could handle." She idly draws her fingers through that backlit, blond corona. "A boy with your hair."

"Better that than a girl with your mop." She makes a token offended huff and he pulls her hand away from his hair and kisses her fingers. "You realize if this theoretical child isn't named after a constellation my mother will have a meltdown."

"Your family is so weird. "

"Well, at least I'm warning you."

At that she sighs. Because, oh yes, she has such a good history of listening to warnings.

He's continuing. "I'm afraid some of the whispers were my fault."

She snorts. Well, yes, hard to be a Death Eater whore sans the Death Eater. All she says is, "Your fault, your fault, your most grievous fault?"

"Mea maxima culpa, yes. Reminding people of the Malfoy power might have had some unintended consequences and for that I'm sorry." He sits up, leans back against the headboard in the dark. "I don't think people would resent the Death Eater thing, not really, not to the point of hassling you that way, if I didn't admit to still having teeth."

She rests her head against his hip, and feels the touch of his fingers slowly pulling through her hair, twining individual strands in tight curls, and then letting them go. It's soothing in the dark room. "I like it," she finally says. He makes a questioning noise and tugs at her hair so she elaborates. "You with teeth. You with power, even if it makes people twitchy. I like it. It feels… right. You were so broken, so empty, like something vital had leaked out of you." She's falling asleep, lulled by his fingers looping through her hair, and there are longer and longer pauses between her words and she's not sure she's connecting the ideas any longer. "It's nice to be taken care of. I always took care of the boys, took care of myself. It's nice" – she yawns – "to let you do it. A little."

They sit and his fingers keep combing through her hair, picking out pins still tucked deeply into her curls. He's shading her from the light, looking down at her. "I take care of what's mine, Hermione." She mumbles something, she's not even quite sure what, and curls up more tightly against him in the dark, against the solidness of him, as his fingers continue to slip in and around her hair, holding her, holding on.

. . . . . . . . . .

**A/N **_**Thank you, as always, for reading. And look, no footnotes! **_

**Honoria Granger**_ – Of course Luna. Who else would wear nightshade in her hair or make blunt, impolitic observations? I've got a couple things I want to do before dinner with dear Narcissa, but I'm outlining the next chapter, which is a Narcissa-only interlude. Short (even for me), but Narcissa-y. Thank you for the grammar fixes! I do truly appreciate them. I fixed some, not the quote issues. On my list!_

**ArwenUndomiel16**_ - He was! You said you loved him, and he's so neutral in canon, if not always in fanon, that I thought I could do what I wanted with him to make a good counterpoint to Ron and Harry. Poor Draco needs his own friends. _

**Cat130**_ – Thank you :)_

**Darc-lover**_ – Hah – thank you so much! I sat down and re-read a lot of P&P trying to get the feel for that kind of interaction. Plus, of course, rereading P&P is great fun and Darcy is… wholly desirable. _

**VeryBerry96**_ – Thank you so much!_

**LadiePhoenix007**_ – Thank you so very much! I guess that, while I fall pretty firmly into the "I can't really see Ron and Hermione working out happily because they are so different" camp that doesn't mean I think he's a jerk or has to betray her with a character who has to be turned into a disaster; thank goodness we don't have to marry the boy we had a crush on in school in real life and can instead just move on and remain friends. Lavender's pretty grating in canon but she's also a high school kid. I'd hate to be defined my whole life by behaviors brought on by insecurity/immaturity at the age of 15 or 16. _

**FA-AL**_ – Thank you! _


	25. Chapter 25 - Interlude with Narcissa

"Thank you, Mopsy." Narcissa takes her tea without looking at the elf, who is, predictably, almost writhing with happiness at being acknowledged. Dear Lucius, oh, how she missed that man, had never really understood the value of inculcating loyalty in the lower orders. Well, if she's being honest he hadn't really been very good at choosing people to follow either. He'd had some rather unfortunate blind spots for a man as brilliant as he had been. Narcissa prefers to think of herself as a being a tad subtler than her late love, a tad more flexible.

She smiles to herself; she'd been _much_ more flexible.

Still, one must live in the present, so she turns to her morning correspondence.

. . . . .

_Dear Mrs. Weasley,_

_Thank you for accepting my invitation to attend the Ministry Charity Ball. It was lovely to see you and your delightful husband last night. Please send my love to your mother and tell her I'll be in touch with her about her interest in setting up a nature preserve in the Fens. _

_Sincerely,_

_Narcissa Malfoy_

_. . . . ._

As she applies her seal to the letter she wonders what had possessed that woman when she'd named her child. "Lavender Brown" was simply cruel and she suspects the girl had been happy to change that last name. Thank goodness her own mother had been more sensible and hadn't named her "Rose Black" or some equally absurd moniker. The Black family tradition of star names, she thinks, wholly without irony, ensures no child is burdened with a ridiculous name. Still, whether the Brown matriarch had sense or, as was much more likely the case, did not, her peculiar interest in the Fens had led, even if indirectly, to that perfect photo in the Prophet, with Draco surrounded and accepted by popular war heroes. So, she muses, does the wheel of fate turn blood traitors to intimates.

Of course, even if one _must_ associate with Weasleys one shouldn't neglect ones older friends. With that, far less disagreeable thought, she pulls another sheet of paper forward and dips her quill again, stopping briefly as she writes to admire her handwriting. Mandatory penmanship lessons at the hands of an exacting governess – half-blood, of course, but with enough elocution classes to pass – had paid off. She'll have to make sure Hermione has help finding a similar woman in the future.

. . . . .

_Dearest Theo,_

_Please do forgive me my familiarity but it's simply so hard to think of you and Draco as the grown men you have become instead of the little boys you were, running on the lawns and charming your brooms to go too high. I think of your mother often and miss her terribly; she was a lovely woman and you look more like her every time I see you. Some afternoon soon you and Draco must bring the women in your lives over for a visit so I can be tediously maternal at you both and marvel again at how quickly children grow. _

_Fondly,_

_Narcissa Malfoy_

. . . . .

She wonders, idly, if the dear boy even has a woman in his life. If not, she'll have to address that. She taps her quill against her lips and ponders. The Lovegood girl is still unmarried, isn't she? She's bit odd but has impeccable lineage and is already friendly with Hermione, which would simplify matters. Or perhaps a Flint? Well, best to be sure before she starts to spin her plans. He has, after all, been out of sight for so long he might have a muggle wife stashed away in some unspeakable neighborhood for all she knows.

She thanks her stars again that Draco had never fancied himself in love with any of those muggle girls he'd chased for years and pulls another sheet of paper forward

_. . . . ._

_Draco,_

_The necklace was lovely. Please tell H. that our library is open to her at any time and that I would be happy to bring any books she's interested in to dinner. No need to brave the Celtic wilds._

_Much Love,_

_Mother_

. . . . .

Really, if she could go back in time and slap Bella she would. Having a Malfoy who's terrified to step foot in the Manor is going to be incredibly inconvenient. She'd warned her sister that her fanaticism would come to a bad end. And, of course, the loss of Lucius to that insanity still ached, would always ache; the war had killed him as surely as it had Bellatrix, even if he'd taken longer to die. She couldn't mourn Bella's death, not really, but, oh, Lucius. She leans forward into her hands and tightens all the muscles in her face, steadies her breathing and fights for control. So much hideous grief, all for nothing. Over her life almost everyone she loves has been stripped away from her in the name of blood and she'll be damned before she loses Draco too.

Then she straightens up, seals her letters, sends them out and pulls her constellation book across the table, turns resolutely past the As to Boötes and contemplates the Hunter as she finishes her tea.

. . . . . . . . .

**A/N – Just a quick interlude, real chapter coming!**


	26. Chapter 26 - The Day After the Ball

Hermione sleeps somewhat late. By the time she's standing in his doorway, hair rumpled, shirt askew and with crease marks from his pillow still on her cheek, Draco has left and returned with breakfast, his muggle paper and the ridiculous gossip rag that passes for wizard news. The more time he's spent in the outside world, the more he's become immersed in what other people, non-wizarding people, consider news, the more his disdain for the Prophet has grown. We're like a small town clustered around an old biddy, trying to overhear gossip, he thinks.

"We're still below the fold," he says, tossing the rolled paper at her. "I thought you said a photo would get us top billing."

She ducks the paper, glares at him, then picks it up from the floor, gathering some loose sheets. "Am I still imperiused."

"No, but if that would improve your reflexes maybe we should consider it."

"Ha. Ha. Ha." Reassembling the paper she asks, "Anything interesting happening in the rest of the world?"

"How interested are you in international currency manipulation?"

"Not very, thanks for asking." She's flipping through the pages of the paper he'd thrown her and finds both the little front-page blurb that squawks about the fund raising event and then the full page of society pictures. He watches her face as she looks from picture to picture, at one she reaches her finger out and touches the paper, smiling.

"Which picture?" he asks, walking around her and looking over her shoulder, wrapping one arm around her waist.

She's touching the one with his mother, she and Narcissa are eternally smiling at one another but the photographer has caught him looking down at her with an adoring smile breaking through the polite mask, gentling his features; it's a terribly intimate moment exposed for the masses. She leans back against him and puts her hand on his arm, over the Mark, following the lines. He flinches, then again when she pulls his arm, his shame, up to her lips. She turns within the circle of that arm and, as he wraps the other one around her, places her hands on his face and kisses him. "Mine," she murmurs against his mouth and, even as her kiss grows more demanding he can feel himself harden in response to her possessiveness, her claim.

"Yes," he whispers back, tightening his grip on her. "I suppose I am."

With wretched timing an owl arrives, dropping a pile of letters and looking as put out as an owl can look. Draco sighs, coitus interruptus via bird. "It won't leave until we feed it. It's not the first today."

She pulls away from him and looks with dismay at the pile of letters. "What the..?"

"A number of people seem to have felt compelled to share their opinion on our evening. We've already gotten a personal note from my mother, offering to bring you any book you want, something from Ginny I didn't read and then the rest of this, which isn't worth your time."

"More whorish mudblood stuff?" she's frowning as she heads to the piles and starts rifling through them.

"Actually, mostly teenagers who like your dress, from what I read, and who think one or both of us should consider dating them. Fan mail, Hermione. Barely literate, poorly spelled tripe but it's friendly enough, if a brutal indictment of modern education. Now that you're no longer imperiused we appear to be the romantic symbol of post-war London, overcoming everything by the force of our love. I got bored and didn't read them all."

"Duller than international muggle currency?"

"Gods, yes." He's feeding the owl, who still looks aggrieved at the weight of the mail, and sorting through the newest additions to the pile. "Junk, junk, junk, something from Theo, junk, junk…"

She's pulled out the letter from Ginny and he watches her out of the corner of his eye as he opens his own note from Theo. She seems reasonably pleased by the contents so he relaxes. "Is it okay if Theo comes over later?"

She looks at him, frowning.

"Call it a Slytherin trade. You've condemned me to lunch with that Blankwit woman, after all."

"Who?"

"Matriarch with the bad jewelry hanging on the Minister."

"_Blishwick."_

He shrugs.

"Honestly, you just met her. How can you have already forgotten her name?"

"She's just furniture to me. Over-decorated, expensive furniture." Hermione looks aghast and he sighs. "So, Theo is okay?"

"You may be the rudest person I've ever met, but yes."

"Really, Hermione? The _rudest?_"

. . . . . . . . . .

The woman reads the Prophet with growing disgust. How the mighty have fallen. It's as though he has a pet, she thinks, some kind of filthy, barely house-trained _pet. _ It's so unfair how some people are just untouchable, she screws her mouth up in a grimace then consciously relaxes it. Let's not get wrinkles because we're fussed over people who _just don't matter_. But it's still unfair. Take the Dark Mark. Try to kill Dumbledore. Bring a mudblood out in public. Some people will be forgiven just about anything. She turns the page of the paper with unbecoming vigor, but not before she sees his mother, a woman who's never treated her with more than cold formality, _smiling_ at the bitch in another photograph. Life is unfair.

. . . . . . . . . .

Draco meets Theo at the door to the bookstore and the two men eye each other with wary caution, two wolves not quite circling each other, not wholly sure they belong to the same pack any longer. Theo has a bottle of wine in one hand, held casually by the neck. "She lives above the shop," Draco says, and gestures towards the stairs crouching in the shadows.

"Small flat for two," Theo raises his eyebrows and stops to run his fingers, appreciatively, along the spine of a small volume.

"Be careful," Draco mutters but Theo throws him a brief, contemptuous look and trails his fingertips along the edge of the shelf, reading titles, and Draco realizes, he remembers, that of course Theo knows to be careful of unfamiliar books. No one raised by Nott, Sr. would assume anything was harmless. No one raised by Nott, Sr. would miss that not all the books in this little shop were pure as the driven snow, a lack of missing that Theo confirms.

"Dark little book," is all he says, however.

Draco raises his own eyebrows and shrugs though the side of his mouth tips up in a smirk and he can feel his hackles settling down. Gods, he's missed Theo, hadn't known if the man would want to see him after the war, hadn't wanted to risk his childhood friend's equilibrium with his own questionable status. Hadn't, truthfully, wanted to risk rejection at the hands of one of the few people he's ever genuinely liked. Theo looks back at him, stares for what seems a long time, then says, "I missed you." There's a pause while they assess each other, then the lanky man adds, "Hermione Granger was a bit of a surprise." Nods towards the book. "Is."

Draco just shrugs, face a study in emotional neutrality, and Theo continues, still a circling predator, still testing. "Your mother wrote me this morning."

At that Draco looks surprised, and gestures towards the stairs. "What does she want?"

Theo Nott pauses and draws a folded letter out of his pocket, hands it over. "Should we make a list and see how many possibilities we can come up with?"

It surprises a laugh out of him. Damn, but it's nice to fence with someone who knows the game. He follows Theo up the stairs, nudges open the door at the top. "Honey, we're home," he calls out in a singsong.

The look she throws him from the kitchen, where she's taking little crab cakes out of a package from the shop and placing them on a cheap plate is, if not murderous, at least quelling. And why is she using that plate? You'd think she'd want to show off her nicer dishes, which he knows perfectly well she has.

"Miss Granger," Theo hands over the bottle. "Thank you for opening your home to me." Looking around. "A little free with the wizard space, weren't you?"

"Draco," she passes off the bottle. "Why don't you open this. I've already got glasses out. And, please, Theo, call me Hermione." She has mason jars out. Mason jars. Where are the wine glasses? What the hell?

He hands her the letter from his mother. "Why don't you guess what she wants while I'm doing that."

Hermione leads Theo towards the living area, cheap plate in one hand and Narcissa's note in another, then settles in one chair, placing the appetizers on a small table. He sits, watching her, in another. She skims the note. "This seems perfectly clear to me. She wants you two to rekindle your friendship, wants to know if Theo has a girlfriend, and is offering to stand in loco parentis." Draco watches Theo start to laugh. "And to answer your question, yes, I've freely adapted this flat. So. Do you have a girlfriend and do you want Narcissa to stand in as a parent? It's a trifle disconcerting, trust me, so a smart man might back away while he still can." And now Theo is leaning on the arm of his chair, almost totally still, smiling and watching Hermione.

Draco hands them each a mason jar with wine and settles on the couch, watching the pair of them. Watching Theo look at Hermione.

"How interesting. I don't. And I haven't the faintest idea." Theo looks at the jar and says, "Point taken." Then, looking back at Hermione. "Nice book selection."

"It's a bookstore. It comes with the territory." She smiles, sips her wine.

"Does the Ministry know about all the books you have tucked away down there?"

"Probably not; I generally don't ask for permission when I do things. Why don't you have a girlfriend?"

"The appropriately gallant thing to say would be because Draco has already claimed you," he parries.

"Perhaps you could try for honest instead of gallant?"

"To a woman interesting enough to live in a large, light-filled flat above that tiny shop filled with some rather dark books? Who's been virtually adopted by Narcissa Malfoy, despite her non-magical heritage, and who serves wine in jelly jars? I would never dare to be fully honest with such a creature." He sips.

She sets her jar down, looks at him, leans forward. Draco wonders if she knows the lace at the top of her bra shows, wonders if she knows that Theo is looking at it. "Is this a problem for you?" She waggles her fingers between herself and Draco, and Theo frowns.

"No," he looks over at Draco. "It was a bit of a surprise, but it's not a problem."

She pulls her feet up under her so she's curled into the chair and says, "Then stop with the verbal fencing."

Theo looks at her, shrugs. "I remain single because I don't want anyone who'd have me. The sons of Death Eaters are not wholly desirable."

Draco looks up at his friend and says, rather languidly, "Surely the money is enough to convince even the most high handed sticklers to overlook your father? Or did the Ministry confiscate it all?"

"Even the Ministry couldn't find it all," Theo snorts. "But, no, I'd rather just set some mud…muggle-born up in a flat and give her a carte blanche than marry a woman who's only interested in my vault. It seems a lot more honest."

"If not especially gallant," Hermione wrinkles her nose.

"Be that as it may, even if I had some pretty light skirt tucked away, which I don't, I sure as hell wouldn't expect Narcissa Malfoy to receive her." Theo takes another sip. "This is good."

"It should be," Draco rolls his eyes. "You brought it."

"And, anyway, you, of all people, should know how carefully everyone not tainted by association with the Dark Lord avoids those of us who are. We're contaminated. Taboo." He takes a large swallow and holds the glass up, looks at it, then Hermione. "Why're you dirtying your reputation with the likes of us, anyway?"

She raises her eyebrows. "Maybe I like dirt. Why are you sullying yourself drinking with a mudblood?"

Theo looks at her, looks at Draco. "You are, surprisingly, one hell of an interesting woman, Hermione Granger, and you seem to be living with my friend, involved with my friend. And times change. It's…hard… to shake off the prejudices of a lifetime. It's hard to see you as an equal, not as something utterly beneath me, not as, at best, a toy or a novelty. Credit me with trying. I'm sure you've noticed not everyone does." He pauses, takes another swallow and she silently fetches the bottle to fill his glass. "You know what they say, what a child believes at five will shape his whole life and, trust me, my house when I was five wasn't a place you'd wanted to be as a muggle-born witch. My father was a brutal man looking for a master. And, unfortunately, he found one."

"He and Lucius were two peas," mutters Draco.

"A pod of murderous, lying, evil bastards?" asks Theo. "That they were. Though the Dark Lord didn't take up residence in my guest room so I suppose I was slightly better off. I was spared the brand, at least." Hermione is still standing near him, setting the bottle down near the little crab cakes on the table, and Theo takes her hand, kisses her fingertips while looking at Draco, and Draco visibly tenses.

"So it's real, then?" Theo asks, still watching his friend.

"Did you think I'd have made her endure tea with my mother if it weren't?" the blond questions sharply.

"No sharing?"

"What?" Hermione demands, snatching her hand back as Draco starts to laugh.

"Are you still such a libertine as all that?"

A shrug. "It was worth a shot." He raises an eyebrow and looks at Hermione. "How about you? No sharing?"

Draco expects her to slap the man, or recoil in outrage, but all she does is smile slowly, dangerously, and say to Theo, "You're trouble."

"Well, I'm not exactly a picnic to pick strawberries on the hill, no."

"So that's how you cope with it all?" she asks.

"Pretty much."

"Do you have nightmares?"

"We all do, Hermione." Theo swirls the wine in his mason jar. "We all do."

. . . . . . . . . .

Dinner is uneventful, whether because Draco chooses the restaurant more carefully or because word has spread not to antagonize him he's not sure. He'd forgotten how much he loves balancing on the knife's edge with someone he doesn't need to protect. Constant jockeying for dominance undercuts the conversation and Hermione watches them spar, watches them race to outdo one another throwing out allusions for the other to catch, watches them push at each other, try to entrap one another. By dessert she's leaning on one hand, her eyes partially closed watching them with a tantalizing smile on her lips. "Home," she finally announces, pushing her chair back from the table, and, half-drunk, they spill into the street, Draco's arm around Hermione's waist, Theo's eyes measuring them both.

The end up back at the flat, Draco sprawled across the couch, Hermione on top of him, her head on his chest, and Theo sitting, leaning against the couch. One of Hermione's hands twines in and around Draco's fingers, the other plays idly with a small, dark curl at the nape of Theo's neck. Draco watches that hand, holds her fingers, throws his other arm above his head. He's utterly still, watching Hermione.

"So," Theo is saying, "You say that having Narcissa Malfoy decide to act as though she's your mother is disconcerting. Why? Be fair, lovely maiden, and give your hapless swain full information before he decides to cross the threshold and give himself over to the lady in question."

Draco can feel Hermione shrug. "I found the alteration between alluding to the day her sister tortured me and suggesting I call her 'mama' jarring. You might have a different experience."

"She told you to call her 'mama'?" Theo pulls forward, turns, and looks at Draco. "Are congratulations in order, mate?"

"Do you see a ring on her hand?" Draco raises his eyebrows.

Hermione frowns. "While I did assume it meant something more than 'I've decided not to kill you in the basement,' perhaps one of you would fill me in as to exactly what you're talking about." Theo starts to laugh and leans back against Hermione's hand.

"Oh, love," murmurs Theo, "Are you sure you want to play in this world? We're convoluted and cruel and you can do so much better than us."

Draco sighs. "The short version is it means she's given her consent to our marriage."

"Beg pardon. Our what?"

"Don't get all aflutter. If I propose to you I won't do it by means of antiquated pure-blood social code communicated via my mother. I'll be all wild and radical and modern and actually ask you myself. Directly. You won't miss it." He's still watching her hand play with Theo's hair.

"Ah. That's… good to know. Assuage my curiosity with the long version of this insanity."

Theo hasn't stopped laughing under his breath. "Traditionally pure-blood marriages were quasi-arranged; a girl sometimes found out who she'd be marrying when a suitor's mother, or, gods forbid, the mother of a man she barely knew, invited her to use a familiar moniker. "

"Marriage for dynastic strengthening?"

"Exactly." Draco would like to remove her hand from Theo's neck but can't think of a graceful way to do it that won't concede this little power game to his friend. "No one, you realize, does this anymore. Even my parents made a love match."

"Mine didn't," Theo says.

"So, I'm guessing I pretty much shouldn't start calling Narcissa by little pet names?'"

"Not unless you plan to try to force my hand in marriage, no." Draco exhales heavily.

"Could I?"

"Force my hand? In theory, but as I'm already a reprobate exile from the exalted ranks of society in so many ways, I could probably endure the additional social stigma of rejecting my mother's chosen bride."

"If he rejects you, my sweet," Theo turns and kisses her fingertips again, "I shall save you from the shame and propose myself." He looks up at Draco. "And on that note I should go, before I end up unable to leave."

At the door Hermione puts her hand in Theo's, smiles at him and says, "We'll have to do this again, soon." He smiles back at her, brushes his lips across the back of her hand, smiles even more broadly at Draco, and then he, and the glint in his eyes, are gone.

Hermione turns to Draco, his own eyes are flecked with light in the dark room, staring at her. "Well," she says, and he pulls her tightly against him, his hand at the back of her neck, his mouth on her, bruising, biting, scraping. He's breathing against her neck. "Mine," he whispers, and she's laughing. "I think," he hears her breathe, "that I like these little serpentine games."

"You're trouble." He's kissing down the side of her neck, holding her so tightly she can't pull away, can't even turn in his grip.

"Mmm. And if I were a picnic in the strawberry fields you'd be bored." She wraps her arms around him, leaning in.

"I plan," his breath against her skin is hot, "to not be bored for a fairly long time."

.

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. . . . . . . . . .

**A/N** - As always, thank you for reading!

**Geormioned**_ - Thank you so much. You are so, so, so kind. As a fellow skimmer I am very flattered._

**Darc-lover**_ – No! I didn't have Sweeney Todd in mind. I was actually rather compulsively listening to Wicked while I wrote that chapter, for no apparent reason, and fearing how bad the Into the Woods movie might be. Of course, I will have to go see it. But I have fears…_

**nksnow99**_ – Thank you so much. Oh, I'm continuing. I have to. I have the last paragraph written! So I know where I'm going, though I'm not 100% sure how I'll get there. A more organized person would have the whole fic outlined to start._

**LadiePhoenix007**_ - Thank you!_

**happybird11**_ – I love her too. She's both kind of evil and manipulative while being this adoring mother. I'm sure she'd be hell as a MIL though!_

**Super MKatR**_ – Thank you!_

**Pregiera**_ - Thank you :)_

**JoeNobody**_ – I LOVE that. It's so perfect. Of course, it also seems like the kind of thing you think of to say later when, in the moment, you just kind of stand there with your jaw hanging open (though Hermione might be quicker on the uptake than I am.) Thank you for that! _

**Guest**_ – Isn't she awesome? I love her too._


	27. Chapter 27 - Night, No Mare 3

**A/N. Warning: Smut. Also angsty. **

. . . . . . . . . .

Sated. That's what he is. Thoroughly, utterly sated. Draco lies on one side, tracing his fingers over her hip, listening to her breathing. She's sprawled out, naked, one knee bent, other leg sprawled, her hair bunched in clumps around her head like wads of spent chewing gum. He puts his hand, possessively, on her stomach, and it's sticky and, feeling that, he laughs, low in his throat. 'Mine,' he thinks, starting to trace circles on her skin.

She squints her eyes open, grimaces, and waves the light off. "I like him," she says.

"I don't have the energy left for another go-round. Don't goad me."

At that she snorts. Undignified, unladylike and gloriously his. "I do though. Like him, I mean, not have energy. Apparently I have a thing for privileged boys with dark sides. Wouldn't have expected that." She closes her eyes again and reaches her hand over towards him. "You need a friend and, let's face it, it's not going to be Ron."

"That's because Ron's an idiot."

A sigh. "He's noble, fearless, and willing to defend you publicly. He's a good man."

"Why must you repeat everything I say? It's tiresome."

She laughs at that, sits up, and tries to plait her hair back. It's an effort doomed by tangles but the attempt silhouettes her breasts nicely against the window so he watches without comment, though he can't quite resist reaching out a finger to stroke the outline they make. "Seriously, Draco." She twitches herself out of reach of his hand. "I like Theo. He's intelligent, he's self-reflective. You've been friends most of your lives and it shows. He, how to say this, he wakes you up. You're more on, more… happier around him."

"More of the vicious jerk you knew and loved as a girl?"

"No, it's not the same. You two, you aren't playing for keeps. You're playing for fun. Watching you two go at each other is –" she shrugs.

"A turn on?" he raises his eyebrows which is, admittedly, a futile expression since the room is so dark but he can't help it.

She laughs, and gives up on her hair, settles back down into his arm. "I guess. It's the smart thing. You're both just so damn smart, and have so many references in common. And it's the power thing; you know I like that side of you." He wonders if she's blushing, saying that. Probably not. Her comfort level with that part of him amazes him, always. "Watching you, watching you both, play with that over dinner, bat dominance back and forth like a ball, well, it's a pleasure to watch you two. Plus, he brings good wine." A pause. "The jealousy thing, the intensity of it, well, that surprised me a bit, I admit."

He huffs, a sharp, disbelieving exhale. She'd skirted the edge of setting him off all night, playing with his boundaries, teasing the edges of his control as if she'd known exactly where they were. He'd felt himself edging towards a dark mood watching her smile at Theo, watching her idly touch his friend on the hand or neck, watching her eyes glint as she'd looked back at him.

Watching her eyes glint. Her tell. Oh fuck, he was an idiot.

"You were doing it on purpose." He licks his lips and feels his mouth begin to turn up into a grin. She's in so much trouble. "You little … minx. You… you picked up on the jealousy and played power games with me _for hours_. And I didn't even notice. I'm… impressed." And he is, but she's still going to pay.

"Oh, you noticed; you couldn't take your eyes off me. And you liked every minute, Draco Malfoy." She's laughing, a low, dangerous sound and raising her arms, slowly, above her head, inviting him even as he hardens, pressed up against her. "You liked watching him watch me. You liked knowing he would leave and you would still be here. What's the point in possessing something no one else wants?" And then, suddenly, he's straddling her, bending over her and pinning her wrists, leaning into them and watching her wince a little from his weight in the dim light, and maybe he's not quite as sated as he'd thought, not quite as tired. She's watching him, smiling, a little provocative smile, breathing into his ear, "And you do, as you've made clear several times tonight, posse…" and then she's arching up against him and gasping as he enters her and, damn, she's wet and he's digging his fingers into her where he's holding her down, slamming into her and feeling her around him. Her mouth is still open and she's already panting, bracing her hands back against the headboard to keep from being pushed up the bed by the force of him and she's watching him, devouring him, consuming his possession of her even as he loses himself in her again. His mouth is on her throat, he's kissing down her neck and along to her shoulder, smelling himself on her.

He slows down, stops, even though that might kill him, and whispers in her ear, "…possess you. Oh yes, I do, pretty girl. Yes, I do." He releases her wrists, hardens his voice. "Now turn over."

She looks at him, shakes her wrists a moment, and is over, on her knees with her cheek down on the pillow and he's sliding into her again. He reaches around, fondles her until she's squirming helplessly against him and he's feeling her writhe on him, feeling her clench around him. "Explain to me, exactly, why I should continue?" A sudden flick and he pulls his hand away.

"I… Draco… you…"

"Is that like 'more happier'? Language doesn't seem to be your forte tonight."

"Please…"

"Well," he pretends to consider, puts his thumb over her and gently brushes it down, then up, then down again and she gasps and holds very still, whimpering. "I do like to hear you beg." Flick. "But I'm not sure if I should reward such a manipulative little thing."

"Already have." A pause. "More than once."

He laughs and takes his hand away, "Then you won't mind if I…"

"Please, no… please…"

He looks down at her, splayed out in front of him, the line of her back leading away towards the hair obscuring her face, the hand he can see clearly in the spill of light from the window clutching at the linens. He trails his fingers lightly across her hips, up her spine, then around. She inhales sharply at his touch and he can feel her tighten. "But I'm still waiting for your argument, my dear. Why should I – " he glides his hands across her skin, down her legs, up her thigh and stops short – "continue."

"I hate you," she mutters.

"I don't think so. You're much too eager for me to believe _that._" And he begins to move again, and she's pushing back against him and he's looking at her hand in the light, feeling her body around him, and he grabs her hips and pulls on her and he's calling out her name as he thrusts into her and then he's done, and, breathing hard, he gasps, "roll over" and she does, avidly, and he's buried his face into her, hands back gripping her hips, and he's lapping at her, tasting himself, tasting her, shoving his tongue into her then running it in circles around and around her until he can feel her body shudder against him and she's crying out and her hands are in his hair, yanking, pulling at him, and then everything is quiet. He can hear her breathing, hear sounds of people laughing on the street below, hear the building sigh and settle around them as he kneels with his face buried in her and waits for her to uncurl her fingers and release him. An exhale and he sits up, wipes his face on the sheet, drops down again next to her, takes her hand.

"What did I do to deserve you?" he asks.

She rolls towards him and her lips are on his. She's so gentle, melting into him now, softly tasting his mouth, running her tongue around, probing him slowly. He groans and runs his hands up her neck into her hair. "I guess," she says against his mouth, "at some point you were very, very good."

"Doubt that's it." He's pulling back, tracing her features in the dark. He could find this woman by touch alone in a room of hundreds.

"Maybe I was bad?" She's wrapping herself around him, feet and legs tangling with his.

"Much more likely."

"Draco," she's suddenly serious and he freezes. "You have no reason to be jealous, you know. As much as I enjoyed the aftermath, aftermaths, you have to know that. This is… this is real, you know."

"I know." His voice is low, tense and she ducks her head against his chest. He slips his chin on the top of her head and says again, "I know."

"Was it too much, did I push it too far?"

He thinks, as he breathes in the scent of her hair, what to say. Finally, "No. You're right, I did really… like… having an equal – gods, that sounds wrong – want you. It felt like, 'she'll toy with you, but she's mine.' And I don't, Hermione, I don't think of you as a _thing_ that I own but…"

"…I know…"

"…and the equal thing. It's true, and it's probably disgusting, but there's almost no one whose opinion I value, not really. But Theo, yeah, having him look at you and know he envied my being in your bed, being in you, that he envied me you, blood status be damned. That was… I liked that." He pauses. "I think I'll enjoy it more, next time, when it's not laced with fear that maybe…"

"No." She's shaking her head against him. "I don't think you realize quite how much I've shifted myself to orbit around you. I think I might actually unconsciously turn to face you whenever you're in the room. Theo could be _in the bed_ and you'd have nothing to fear. I'm like a moon, circling around you."

"I think it's more of a binary star thing."

"What?"

"The orbiting thing. It's mutual."

"Oh." She's pulled away from him a little, closed her eyes. "Good." Then she mutters, "But if you flirt with someone the way I did tonight, I'll end you. Just so you know."

"Doesn't seem quite fair." He's starting to fall asleep; it's been a long night, but he's not sure he can let that pass without any comment.

"Love rarely is."

"Not planning on sharing?"

"You can. Maybe. I'm not going to. Mine." She's mumbling, and so close to the edge of consciousness he's not sure she even knows what she's saying. He leans over, kisses her forehead, and lets sleep come to them both.

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**A/N** – Thank you for reading, again. Your page views and comments and follows and good wishes thrown up in the air wafting my way are the sweet, sweet kiss of external validation. And while, of course, one should create for the pure joy of the act, it is nice to know I'm not in a vacuum. Vacuuming. Can you vacuum in a vacuum?

So… thank you!

I wanted to say, and forgot yesterday, a big thank you, complete with red hot blush, to _a veritable iron rose_, who did a rewrite/retelling of chapter 1 of this story called of hurricane boys and stormchaser girls, and you can see it on here: s/10616021/1/of-hurricane-boys-and-stormchaser-girls (and it's clickable off my profile)

**Cat130**_ - Thank you!_

**Darc-lover**_ - To stay shamelessly off topic, I'm… iffy… about Meryl Streep as The Witch. Not that she can't act it. She could act anything. But it's a pretty vocally demanding part and I've never really thought of her as a singer. And exactly with the mason jars. H is just as manipulative as the men are, just from a different "you'll take me as I am" perspective. Thank you so much about the characterization. I really wasn't sure, introducing Theo and the weird tension between the three of them, if I was going to go too far and lose the thread of the original pairing. And thank you also about the Regency comment. I've read every last Georgette Heyer regency novel; they're addictive._

**Guest**_ – I was thinking Pansy, but I purposefully left it vague. It could be any pure-blood young woman who resents the Draco/Hermione connection._

**likewhattt**_ - Thank you! And, wow. This is getting really long to read all in one sitting so I'm very flattered. So… thank you!_


	28. Chapter 28 - Dinner with Narcissa

"While I really am grateful my mother has taken you to her, err, bosom, I still fail to see why we're doing this." Draco neatly removes the take-away from the bag and hands it to Hermione.

"Because, alas, though I have many skills, you may have noticed that cooking isn't one of them." She turns to put the pie behind her on the counter. "It might be a trifle cruel to expect your mother, or anyone, to eat something I'd prepared. Especially pie. Crust turns out to be very tricky."

He narrows his eyes at her. "I can assure you, no one in my former set would expect cooking skills, least of all my mother. That's what the staff are for."

"Then I'm sure I don't know what you mean."

"I'm quite sure you do."

She sighs in mostly mock exasperation. Mostly. "I'm simply returning her hospitality. I like your mother, you know; we have a perfectly lovely arrangement where she says outrageous things to me and then I smile at her." She pauses. "I think of it as a bit of a game; can I guess what jaw-droppingly inappropriate thing she will say first. The first time she did it she shocked me and I dropped a cup; I've since gotten better at not reacting." She pokes him. "I hope you weren't especially attached to cream china with a green glaze because I'm pretty sure I shattered that one beyond any hope of repair."

"I'll carry on, somehow." A wry grin, "I swear, you take a perverse pleasure in how Byzantine she is."

"It pains me to tell you this, but you overrate her complexity. Also, she's on her way so no time for perverse pleasures, sorry." She's leaning against the counter and reaching up to brush her fingers across his face with a promise for later. He closes his eyes and softens into that touch, feels her trace his brows, his cheekbones, down to his mouth. The last beam of sun slides in and warms him even as he's throwing her into shadow. "It will be okay. I promise."

He doesn't open his eyes. "Can I hold you to that?"

Hermione sighs. "Really, it will be fine. I'm sure she won't even mention torture this time."

"Is that why you destroyed my tea cup?"

"No."

He squints at her, but doesn't press further. "I'm relieved, I guess. Shall I wait downstairs to escort my beloved, torture-mentioning mother up?"

He can see the smile flicker across her expression, twitch at her lips, come to rest in her eyes. "If you would." As he heads for the door she adds, "Oh, and Draco?"

"Hmm?"

"My guess is star names and why they're perfect for children."

He pantomimes throttling himself before heading down.

Waiting in the shop he idly jabs at one book until it growls at him. Hermione had told him it wasn't really a shop people came to for cookbooks; trust her to understate the nature of her collection that way. "Why," he'd asked, when he first started to read through her titles, when he'd realized how dangerous some of her books were, "Why would you have this?" He'd pointed at a book even his father had kept in a locked cabinet.

"Last time I was dealing with dark magic," she'd replied, "we were gleaning hints about what was going on from children's books and high school texts; it was what one might call 'non-optimal'."

"By which I take it you mean 'really bloody awful'?"

"Pretty much," she'd agreed. "And when you fight monsters, you know, sometimes you have to look into the abyss.*"

Sometimes he wonders, when he sits in the dark and watches her when he can't sleep, if he's part of that abyss looking back into her.

"You look well, darling. Being back in wizarding London appears to agree with you." And his mother has arrived. "I've brought your Hermione the second volume of Rúnar's treatise on Icelandic ship runes. We don't have the first volume at the Manor but a little bird told me she does and I hope she might let me borrow it for a bit to have a fair copy made."

"Mother." Draco stops her at the foot of the stairs, wanting to corner her privately before leading her up.

"Yes, dear?"

"I need to ask a favor."

Narcissa seems to be giving her attention to a shelf of small books that might be preening under her examination. "Of course. This really is quite the shop. If we were to merge it with our library, the collection would be unrivaled."

"Are you even listening to me?"

"Don't raise your voice, Draco. It's vulgar."

"Yes, mother," he agrees, running a hand through his hair with the fervent hope she doesn't mean to be difficult. "I do recall you mentioning something once about giving your attention to people who speak to you."

Taking her finger off the spine of one book, Narcissa smiles at her son with nonchalant ease. "Do you? What can I do for you, sweet boy?"

"I'm planning to throw a birthday party for Hermione this fall. I would very much like your permission to borrow the townhouse."

"Ah." Narcissa purses her lips. "Given Hermione's concerns about large groups are you sure that's wise? She seemed – tense – at the little Ministry event."

"Just the other two members of the vaunted golden trio and their wives. And Theo, I suppose. I'll need someone to protect me from the smothering goodness of her friends."

"Ah. Something exclusive, then. How exceedingly interesting." She drums her fingers on the shelf. "Would you like my help?"

"I, no, yes. That would be… thank you, Mother."

"Try not to stammer, dear. It makes you look indecisive. Owl me the date of the event, once you know it, and I will arrange the catering and such so you need not concern yourself with trivialities." She pauses and then, "Do you like the townhouse, Draco?"

He narrows his eyes. "Yes, Mother. Any house you've had a hand in is sure to be lovely."

"Does Hermione?"

"I haven't asked her but I'm sure she'll say it's quite nice."

"It's not the Manor, of course, but it certainly has enough room for a larger family."

Draco looks at her, sure he's missing something, feeling pieces of a pattern just out of reach. "Are you thinking of selling the townhouse?"

Did his mother actually roll her eyes and sigh at him?. "No, dear; I'm happy with things the way they are." Now she's very definitely frowning. "You're rather like your father, sometimes. Be sure to owl me that date. Now, perhaps, can we go up to your flat so I can pass this little book to dear Hermione and get a glass of wine?"

He waits for her to make the inevitable, 'Oh, goodness, but this is so much bigger than I thought' comment but instead she just looks around, raises an eyebrow at the fireplace and says, "Fautrier? What an unusual choice. I would have expected you'd want something happier." and Hermione laughs, laughs at his mother, and, handing her a glass without being asked, says, "Draco calls it beautiful and terrible and I think it suits."

"Fortunately we now have the two of you, creating peace in our post-war world with your idyllic romance. From terrible to beautiful?"

"It's certainly better than when he had me imperiused, yes."

And Narcissa Malfoy laughs as well and leans forward to kiss Hermione on the cheek. "It's lovely to see you, darling. How goes your translation? And how was the dinner with dear Theo?"

Draco waits, watching Hermione's face for even the faintest flicker of an eyelash betraying, well, anything. There's nothing. She simply gestures his mother to a seat, the same place Theo had sat, assessed, flirted, and says, as she herself sits, "Oh, I'm still stuck on the same orphaned adjectives. I'm sure they're important but I can't find any noun they might modify; they might be nominal, I suppose, but if they are it changes the whole thrust of the spell-work."

"And Theo?"

"Excellent. We didn't know each other well at school, of course. I was, shall we say, not his type." She takes a sip from her wine. "But as an adult I find him charming."

"No, I can't imagine he would have deigned to speak to you when he was a boy. I'm sure he's finding his adjustment to the new world order rather disconcerting but I'm relieved to hear he's making himself agreeable." Narcissa smiles blandly. "I brought a book for you to look at, the second volume in a set; I was told you might have the first."

Hermione picks up the slim book and with a relaxed ease checks it for myriad dangers, then flips through it. Draco watches her controlled mask slide away as she falls into what he thinks of as her working trance. She's tapping her finger on one page, sliding it along another. He's learned enough watching her with other texts to deduce she doesn't consider this to be a particularly fragile manuscript though she's giving it far more attention than she usually awards newer books; indeed, she spends enough time looking through it to pass easily into rudeness. She finally looks up. "I didn't realize there was a second volume. What he has to say about the unreliability of ship runes in the first has always seemed a bit biased to me; his perspective appears narrow there but I think it widens a bit here. Where did you get this?"

"From my private library, of course. I would be interested in acquiring the first volume, if you're willing. It seems a shame for the books not to be properly shelved as a matched set."

"True enough. I know I have the first one somewhere; let me think about where before I abandon you to go prowling through dusty boxes of books."

. . . . .

By dessert he's both exhausted and bored. He's spent the evening confronted not by the mother he understands, a woman who adores him, despises everyone else and is obsessed with prestige - a woman, in short, far too much like him – but with an acerbic wit who seems to genuinely enjoy the company of someone who, by all rights, she should dismiss as wholly inconsequential. They talk about books. They talk about some woman named Blishwick (why does that name seem familiar?) who they apparently both dislike. They talk about dress shops with a level of detail that has him reaching for more wine. He'd expected a painful evening of watching his mother layer icy put-downs over verbal traps and instead they're gossiping – who is Luna and why is her marital status relevant? – like school chums. Hermione had told him she liked his mother; he hadn't believed it. He should have.

He's thought before they were alike. He congratulates himself, silently, on his perception and treats himself to more wine as a reward. He's never before considered how lonely his mother might be, isolated by her frigid dislike of, well, almost everyone outside her family, or how much interest she would take in Hermione, how much pleasure she would take in an even a potential addition to her exceedingly small family circle. As extraordinarily tedious as the evening has been – who knew there were so many books about fashion or that the two of them would have such pronounced opinions about such – at least any fears he's had that his mother isn't sincere in her apparent fondness have been laid to rest. He never, however, wants to sit through another meal with just the two of them. Ever.

Because he's stopped following their conversation and instead is letting his thoughts wander, he misses the transition from away from fashion. It's one hell of a transition.

"I don't know," Hermione is frowning. "I am not really comfortable calling anyone 'evil'. It lets us make them into – I don't know, into someone we are not, we could never be. It's too easy. Riddle, maybe. By the end he'd butchered his soul so badly he wasn't really human, but the others?

"They did horrible things, grotesque things. They were violent, prejudiced. Unscrupulous. But if I call them evil… what if I had something I cared about. Believed in absolutely and thought was in danger, and if I just hurt one person, one wretched, raggedy person I despised anyway, someone who threatened everything I wanted to protect, if I did that and I could save what I valued? I want to think I wouldn't do it, wouldn't torture someone. I'd like to think I'd draw that line." She's rubbing her arm, where the scar is. "But I don't know. I don't know what I'd do.

"It's why I love Harry, you know." She looks at Draco "He would sacrifice himself before he'd hurt someone. He would literally die first. I wish I had that kind of… that purity of heart."

He tries to nudge her away from this mood. "How can a woman who started a group dedicated to freeing house elves worry about her innate goodness." She just looks at him and shakes her head.

"You mean a woman who got an idea in her head and pursued it like an obsession without considering she might be wrong? Even though it turns out severing an unwilling brownie from his family is more akin to betrayal than liberation? That's not an example of my being good, it's an example of my being an unthinking zealot."

"Spare me," Narcissa interjects, "this boring recital of your assorted failings." She pats her mouth with her napkin. "Though, of course, you're quite right about the elves."

The both look at her and she sighs. "Hermione, do you consider your precious Dumbledore a good man?"

"Of course." Her mouth is set in a grim line.

"Fascinating. The man waged a strategic war from inside a school, using children as human shields." She's ticking points off on her fingers. "He shaped your Mr. Potter, and you too, into weapons and pointed you at Riddle. He withheld information from you, manipulated you, used you. He tossed lives away to achieve his goal and yet you call him good without second thought. He was, what did you call your enemies? Unscrupulous? Do you really think you, anyone, can get things done while staying totally blameless? Really?"

"Harry…"

"… was a pawn. He didn't shape events. He didn't plan the final battle. He just played out that old man's strategy. Of course his hands stayed clean."

"All of Neptune's oceans**…" murmurs Draco.

"And Dumbledore's hands may well have turned the seas red. That's the cost, children, and if you don't want to pay it, stay here above your shop, abdicating what power you have, letting other people make the hard choices. Though I admit to being surprised either of you would trust other people that much."

"And thus spoke my mother." Draco raises his eyebrows and pours more wine into his glass. Tomorrow might be unpleasant.

"You talk about wanting to 'be good,' both of you, as if it were some kind of idyll, but you can't truly be good without power," she says. At Hermione's look she amends, "You can't do good without power. And, really my dear, can you be good if you can't do good?" and then she plunges her fork into her pie and eats while the two gape at her. "This is good."

Draco drains half his glass in one swallow and then tops the glass off again. Screw it. Tomorrow can be as unpleasant as it needs to be.

Hermione responds first. "I think we did just fine, Harry, Ron and I, and we were pretty powerless."

Elegant Narcissa Malfoy laughs. "No, you weren't. Your Mr. Potter was marked by prophecy, groomed by your ruthless headmaster, gifted magical items of surpassing power. You were all supported by an entire organization, though the cleverest witch of her age might have taken a moment to wonder why school children were being sent out to do some of the dirty work. That's generally considered bad form."

"Not quite cricket?" Draco asks, leaning his arm on the table so his mark showed. His mouth has tightened and his eyes narrow.

His mother looks at it, looks at him. "And that turned out to be one of that man's critical errors, didn't it."

"True enough," Hermione is looking at his mother, swirling her wine in her glass. "Because of you." She sets her glass down, stands up. "I think I just remembered where I put Rúnar's first volume. Let me go get that for you before you leave."

Draco watches her go downstairs, waits for the door to close, then, "Thank you for the use of the townhouse as well as your help. It's very kind of you."

She shrugs. "Permit me to dote just a bit, especially as you're all I have left."

"You do have another sister, Mother. And a nephew of sorts."

"No." Narcissa Malfoy sits, her back easily straight, not a flutter of an eyelash, not a muscle tightened around her mouth to betray tension. You'd think he hadn't just mentioned the unmentionable. Is this kind or cruel, forcing her to acknowledge the existence of the family pariah? He's drunk enough not to care.

"Andromeda's alive." Draco kneels at her side, takes her hands in his.

"Get up, Draco," The delicate moue, the frown. He's violating her rules and it's throwing her off balance, at least a little. Good. He can almost hear the words she's not saying: 'Malfoys don't kneel'. Well, he'd knelt to get the damned mark and he'll kneel now if that will shock her into listening to him.

"I am begging you - begging you, mother – to consider contacting your sister. I know you miss her. Shall I tell you all about the constellation Andromeda? Remember lying on the lawn, pointing it out to me, telling me the stories of the maiden chained to a rock? You don't have to be so damn lonely, shut up away in that empty manor; don't be a fool. Go see your sister."

"'Dromeda married some mu… muggle-ish person. Her name was burned out of the records. She may as well be dead."

"Oh, don't be ridiculous." He tips his head to the side and the room does an interesting jig. "You're sitting in a flat above a shop where I live with a woman who is 'muggle-ish' and you can't even be bothered to bat an eye about that. You've had her to tea. You take her to lunch. You just had some existential argument. Your friendship is, frankly, terrifying. If you can accept her you can drop the party line as it applies to your sister as well."

"It's different."

"No, it's not. Please. Promise me."

"Of course. I'll think about it." It's a polite phase but a phrase that means nothing, commits her to nothing; it's the best he can hope for, damn her.

He can almost feel Hermione standing in the shadows at the top of the stairs, hidden in the darkness watching them, waiting. When the moment has passed, she comes into the room. "I believe I've found the first volume for you, Narcissa." The older woman begins to make the appropriate token offers of payment and, predictably, Hermione refuses. "No, no. Keep it, please. It was moldering away in a box; unappreciated. And, as you've said, the two belong together."

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**A/N – Thank you, as always, for reading. Lots of love to my most recent reviewers, Cat130, Darc-lover, & dracosgirl007. You are my chocolate covered cherry, the kind with dark chocolate and real booze.**

* Nietzsche, of course. "Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you."

** "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather / The multitudinous seas incarnadine, / Making the green one red." Macbeth IIii.

Rúnar is just Icelandic for "runes". I couldn't resist burying word play in his name, especially with the "ship runes" (skiprúnar). 'Cause, you know, shipping.


	29. Chapter 29 - Temporary Tattoos

"Good night?" Draco has mastered making early-morning-rumpled look good. He's come out of his room looking infuriatingly like a carefully styled catalog advertisement for 'weekend'. Hermione is also wearing jeans, but on her they have completely failed to look anything but comfortable. This, she thinks, is unfair, and she glares at him from the couch where she's reading under a giant puffy cloud of hair. "I take it that look means 'no'?"

Hermione rolls her eyes and resists throwing her book at him. "I barely made it to the bed after the unfortunate incident with the chair. Remember? I nearly sprained my ankle."

They both look at the chair, broken on the floor. Draco clears his throat. "Yeah. I'm sorry about that."

"I _told_ you the heels weren't stable."

"I said I'm sorry. Maybe we can just decide to never mention this again?"

"Oh no. For the rest of your life I plan to bring up the importance of surface stability whenever you get the idea to bend me over something, _especially_ if I'm in heels."

"I think I can live with that." He looks around. "Where's breakfast?"

"Bakery was closed and I'm not cooking. Have toast." She knows she sounds petulant but walking to the bakery on her ankle, which was still sore, only to find the place closed had made her grouchy and, really, first he has the brilliant idea about the heels and then he sleeps in, and now she's tired, and he wants baked goods, the baked goods she was going to get until the stupid shop was closed.

"How about we go out for fried tomatoes? Bacon? Things someone else prepares?" He slips over to the couch and slowly, gently gathers her hair into a thick braid, low on her neck. She closes her eyes and luxuriates at the touch. "I really am sorry about your ankle."

"I knew I liked you for a reason."

"I thought it was the orgasms." He kisses her neck.

"Nope. Totally for your devotion to a full breakfast." She's smiling now, and turns to look him up, down, and then up again. "And for what you look like in those jeans."

"Shallow much?"

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever," she says, unabashed.

Later, when they've made it to the restaurant, ordered, when plates heaped with eggs, tomatoes and bacon have been set in front of them, Draco stabs a piece of tomato and chews it, all while staring moodily into his tea.

"You aren't hoping to find the answers to life, the universe and everything in the leaves are you?" Hermione raises her eyebrows while nibbling on a strip of bacon.

"Just wondering if my mother was right." There's a long pause while they both eat in silence. Finally, as Hermione pushes her plate away, he continues. "Can't I just play house with you and be happy?"

"Well, she probably has a bit of an agenda here…"

"You think?"

"… but – as much as I hate to admit it – I think she's - " Hermione pauses. "She's brutally clear-sighted. No one gets through this life wholly innocent. The more influence you have, the more your hands will get dirty." She wipes bacon grease off her own hands on the cheap paper napkin, then looks around for another one when it tears. "I assume – why are there never enough napkins at this place? – that long term you don't really want to stay cloistered in our flat."

He leans over to the next table, snags its napkins, and hands them to Hermione. "_Our _flat?"

"Well, yes. It's been our flat for a while now." She takes the napkins with a vaguely guilty look at the now napkin-less table and scrubs at her oily skin. "I was actually thinking we could just officially consolidate into one bedroom and you could turn that spare room into an office and stop leaving all your currency fluctuation spreadsheets and Malfoy Enterprise stuff over the table. I mean, if you wanted to." She suddenly looks nervous. Feels nervous. If they do this, it's admitting they aren't just flat mates who happen to spend every night in the same bed. If the go down to just the one bedroom they're really and truly living together. Maybe that's too much strain for whatever this thing is, too much pressure.

"Tired of all the paperwork everywhere?" He leans on his hand, one elbow on the table, and looks at her.

"Well, if it's too much trouble to set up an office space…"

"It's not."

"So, umm, that's settled?" She looks at him and he grins at her.

Of course, it was far from settled and they spend the rest of the morning, into the early afternoon, arguing about which bedroom should become the official bedroom, how to best ration out space for clothes, how many books can reasonably be placed on a nightstand. Before the mock battle over whether having a large stuffed penguin on the bed was adorable or weird could escalate into truly hurt feelings, they both decide to take a break. Hermione heads downstairs to catalog a new shipment of books from an estate, most of which will end up on a table on the sidewalk next to a sign reading 'free', and Draco follows her, flopping into the ratty armchair that every good bookstore must have, snagging a rather worn and quite old magazine from her "toss" pile.

"This stuff is pretty terrible," he comments after a bit. He looks at the cover. "This is from 1944. Gods. Someone saved this. Someone liked…"

But the door opens and cuts off his critique.

"I'd heard you'd gotten a pet, Draco, but I didn't believe even you would take up with a mudblood." Pansy Parkinson is standing in the open doorway, heels too high, dress too tight, possibly a little pissed despite how early it is, with a mean look in her eyes.

Draco flicks a glance at her then returns his attention to the magazine as if he can't even deign to acknowledge the woman's presence. Every line of his body suddenly radiates a dangerous façade of boredom. Hermione's fairly sure she hasn't seen him this angry since he moved in, but he's hiding a lot of fury under that languid pose. She's guessing Pansy hadn't bothered to seek him out before his public redemption, was one more former acquaintance – a former girlfriend - who'd dropped him as soon as he was on the losing side. She wonders if they had been lovers as teens. She wonders if anyone would mind if she just killed the other woman now.

"Pansy…" Hermione says, hoping to stop this before it begins.

"Don't bother talking to her, Granger." He turns a page. "Her response is sure to be uninteresting; her mouth's only good for one thing, and I don't think you're her type."

"Oh, does your little pet do what she's told?" Pansy's come all the way into the shop now and is looking around. She sniffs dramatically. "It smells in here. Inferior types tend to do that to a place." She looks at Hermione directly for the first time. "All these years and you still haven't managed to figure out how to do your hair, I see."

"I think you should leave," Hermione says, tightly reining in her murderous urges. "It would be better if you left."

"Oh? That's too bad. No one cares what you think. I think Draco should explain how even someone who has fucked up his life as badly as he has could take up with trash like you."

Hermione looks again at Draco, who is idly turning another page.

"I'm sure you wish to know why I am here after so long," Pansy insists, approaching him.

"Alas, I am fully aware you'll tell me." He doesn't look up.

"There are – " she stops for a moment. "Would you please look at me – there are some hard truths you need to hear, Draco Malfoy."

"Oh, well, thank the gods you're here to share them with me. Whatever would I do without your assistance?"

"You, Draco Malfoy, are throwing yourself away. You are wealthy, pleasant to look at, reasonably clever and a prize. Other than that disgusting mark on your arm there is nothing wrong with you and yet, here you are…"

"Your praise leaves me quite speechless."

"…trying to punish yourself for that unpleasantness with the Death Eaters with this ridiculous, well, I won't even grace it with the term 'romance.' This sordid affair. It's one thing to put your little side piece up in some little flat, but you don't take her out in public. You're breaking the rules."

"Hermione, love." Draco doesn't look up from his magazine. "Do you find my Mark disgusting?"

She's watching the scene unfolding in front of her. "There are," she replies "any number of things I find disgusting about forcing a child to swear allegiance to any ideology, threatening his parents with death if doesn't comply. But the scar itself? I suppose the graphic design is a bit obvious for my tastes but 'disgusting' seems a bit harsh."

"Hmm. You've never mentioned your thoughts on the design."

"Skulls and snakes? Did the man have a goth teenager develop his branding?"

Draco flashes her a warm smile. "It could have been starlings." He startles a laugh out of her.

"You aren't even listening to me!" Pansy's voice climbs a mountain of shrill.

"I'm sorry, Pansy." Draco returns his attention to his reading, adding with a nonchalant shrug. "I simply find your clinging to forlorn hopes a trifle dull and so my mind wanders. Also, your strategy of abusing me makes you seem a fool."

"At least I'm not the kind of fool who presents filth to my mother at a charity ball," hisses Pansy.

"Be careful, Pansy." Another fragile page turns, crumbling a bit under the force of his fingers. There's no way he's reading this fast. "People might start to think you care."

"Like anyone could care about Death Eater scum like you," Pansy sneers, now angry as well as mean, and then to Hermione, "Bit of a social climber, aren't you, mudblood. I supposed even a pure-blood with the Mark is better than…"

But Hermione is, alas, destined to never find out what Draco is better than as she's had enough; her wand out, she makes a quick swish and flick and then says, in the lightest of seemingly unconcerned tones, "But, Pansy, you have the Mark too. Don't you remember?"

Pansy tosses her head. "None of us were Death Eaters but your pathetic little blood traitor conquest; he's the only war criminal."

"It's on your arm." And Hermione raises her eyebrows and tilts her head to the side. Her lips turn up in the tiniest of smiles. "Look down, Pansy." The other woman glances, involuntarily towards her arm and then chokes back a scream; the Mark is appearing on her skin, like a child's invisible ink drawing fading into legibility as it's held over a flame.

"I never took the Mark," she stumbles forward, towards Draco who has raised his head and looks briefly at her but who, rather than reacting, starts to idly examine his fingernails. "This isn't real. You're doing this." Her voice rises in pitch and begins to take on a tint of hysteria as the pattern darkens into a true, deep black. "Make it stop. MAKE IT STOP."

"What do you think it'll be like, Pansy, to walk the streets of London with that burned into your arm?" Hermione presses on, her voice getting lower, crueler. "Do you think people will care, will they still love you for the on-so-thoughtful Pansy you are, or will they pull away? Will they spit on you, I wonder? Do you think your mother will repudiate you or will she stand by you the way Narcissa stood by Draco? How long do you think you'll be able to keep it covered before someone sees and calls the Ministry in a panic? Pansy Parkinson is a Death Eater. And who will care that no one remembers seeing it until now?"

"But I didn't take it! Only Draco took the Mark! Draco, make her stop!"

But Draco has lounged back into the ragged arm chair, legs kicked out to one side, looking for all the world like a renaissance prince watching some trivial entertainment brought out to amuse him. Only his wand, now pointed steadily at Pansy, gives away that he's not wholly indifferent to the scene unfolding before him; even his voice is just a bored drawl. "But, Pansy, my dear, I thought you said she was my pet? My little trained animal? Perhaps one of the things I've trained her to be is my attack dog. And you know how it is with animals, once they've got the scent of the fox there's really no calling them back."

"I do recommend a quick apology." Hermione draws circles in the air with her wand. "It's so uncouth to start insulting people you haven't seen in years that I'm quite sure we misunderstood you. It's generally a wise policy to clear up little confusions like that, don't you agree?"

"I… I…"

"This isn't hard."

The woman finally mutters, "I'm sorry, Draco." Then she turns and glares at Hermione. "I'll get you for this, you bitch." The words are almost, but not quite, under her breath. "You can't hide behind him forever."

Draco smiles, a cold, lazy smile that Hermione's never seen before. It's not the mocking sneer she knew as his as a child and it's certainly not the warm grin she's come to expect when she catches his eye. It's related to the strained, glittering smile that comes out when he's in the depths of his worst moods but somehow worse. Much worse. "If you were to hurt Miss Granger, Pansy, I should come after you." He raises his eyebrows. "Do try to keep in mind, as you contemplate that, that Miss Granger is inherently a good person, despite her charming, if antiquated, insistence on manners. And I am not."

"It's been lovely seeing you again, Pansy," Hermione says, in a horrible parody of formal leave-taking. "Do come back." The other woman is backing out the door, staring at Draco, utterly white, and then she's gone.

"Well." Draco exhales. "The last time I saw you that angry I think you broke my nose. Should I be relieved or worried you have more self control now?" He runs his tongue over his teeth and then asks, "What was that spell, anyway?"

"Oh," she slumps down and starts to laugh. "It's just a variation of temporary tattoo thing I developed for Ron and Harry's kids. Look." She waves her wand and a pink, sparkly unicorn appears on his arm. "It's a great way to keep small people occupied without having them get sticky all over you."

"Sticky?"

"Children magically generate stickiness. Not sure how."

"It seems like a pretty big step from pink ponies to a faux mark." He looks at her dubiously. "Did you just create that variation on the fly while that shrew was yammering on?"

Hermione shrugs. "It's the same basic idea, just a different image. It wasn't a hard adaptation."

"Still, it's bloody brilliant. You, woman, are bloody brilliant." The unicorn stamps its tiny foot and shakes its head. "So… uh - how long am I going to be stuck with Princess Sparkles here?"

"Not long."

"You know, you're kind of scary when you're angry. You just go right for someone's weakness and don't hold back."

She looks at him. "You've heard about the pot and the kettle, right? Mr. 'Try to remember I'm a right bastard.' I thought you might actually put your hands around her neck and start squeezing. Ugh. I hate that woman."

"Well, if that daft bint thinks she can threaten you and not get slapped down she's even dumber than I thought, which is saying something." A pause. "Why were you so angry at her? Being called names doesn't usually set you off like that."

She shrugs. "I wasn't the only one who was furious."

"Nice dodge. Answer the question."

She doesn't say anything for a bit, just vigorously puts one book after another into her discard pile. Finally, "I resent that she shows up now, now that you aren't persona-non-grata anymore." Slam. Another book rejected. "And I guess I'm a little nervous you'll..."

"Never."

"You two are the same class. Same rules. Same…"

"Never." He's crossed the room while she was sorting books and he leans over the counter, puts his fingers under her chin, tips her head up. "I love you, you, despite your lack of balance, inability to catch and strange fondness for flightless birds. You, who were willing to have me as a branded failure no one would talk to. You know me, Hermione. You know me dark, you know me cruel, you know me shaking in the night and you're still here. Do you think I'd be stupid enough not to value that? To even look twice at – " he shakes his head and huffs out a sad laugh. "I'm not going anywhere. Just believe that." He looks down at his arm where the temporary tattoo is now urinating and rolls his eyes. "Really, Hermione? Really? A peeing pony?"

"Well," she sighs. "Pee jokes are a big hit with the small set and I've done your pony multiple times before so it's kind of this pre-made thing. I've also done a raven that flies around and around, pooping. Lav did ask me not to do that one on her kids anymore, but Ron and Ginny both think it's hysterical. Want to see it?" A tiny smile breaks through the nervous sadness as she looks up at him and he runs his thumb over her lips, tracing that smile.

"No, we're good. Thanks." The pony is slowly disappearing from view. "Is the other one already faded?"

She bites the inside of her cheek and wrinkles her nose. "Not quite." He raises his eyebrows. "It'll last a few days. Maybe a bit longer."

"It's really wrong that that makes me happy, isn't it?"

.

.

.

.

.

. . . . . . . . . .

**A/N – Thank you, all, for reading and (I hope) enjoying. Extra thanks to my reviewers: nikki98, Amber 611, Darc-lover, and Guest. Guest – I agree with you about the asterisks. It bugs me I can't do regular footnote marks. I tried just putting lengthier explanations sans asterisks this time. Let me know if you think it works.**

"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: / Its loveliness increases; it will never / Pass into nothingness;" (John Keats)

The answer to life, the universe, and everything is 42. (Douglas Adams)

Alas, I could not work in the name of the old magazine Draco is reading. In my head it's a poetry magazine, long folded, called _Angry Penguins_.


	30. Chapter 30 - Draco's Monologue

"I love you, you know." He's been lying in the dark for hours, staring at the ceiling. He doesn't even think the woman curled into his side is awake. The incident with Pansy churns in his brain; he can't sleep with it going up, down, up again. "I didn't mean to love you; I just meant to apologize. Funny, you've still never let me do that, not really.

"You weren't the first person I apologized to. I made a list; I don't think I've ever told you that. Most people weren't interested. Katie Bell was the nicest; she told me thank you and she would very much like it if I never spoke to her, or contacted her in any way, ever again. That was about as much as I'd hoped for from you. I never expected this.

"Sometimes I try to trace how I got from where I was to here and I can't find the path.

"I wanted to kill that woman today. Really kill her. You have to mean it, with unforgivables, with all magic. You know that, of course. It's just the will of the magician made manifest. And what I wanted, really, really wanted, was to kill her. That she would dare come here, dare pretend she didn't spend seven years sneering at me, dare insult you, and then have the nerve to tell me _I'm_ breaking the rules. She has no idea how lucky she is that you went after her first.

"That was so fucking brilliant. Gods, I love knowing she's terrified people will think she's as disgusting as she said I was. As polluted.

"I'm not naïve enough, you know, to not realize you had to hate her, really hate her, to get even a pretend Mark onto her; that's just the way magic works. Will made manifest. I just - you defended me. You defend me. You've stood in the streets and dared people to question you. You've stood at my side in front of our whole society and cast your mantle around me to redeem me. You threatened Pansy; gods, Hermione, you were so angry at her. For me. I - no one's ever done that. Not for me. Dumbledore certainly let me be a pawn in his game and never reached out a hand to help me. I know my mother did all sorts of things behind the scenes to keep me alive but I've never seen someone just up and tell people to go to hell for me. Only you. Just you.

"I can't even find words for you. You'd have a thousand poems at your fingertips, brilliant words pulled out of the depths that talk about love and life and hope. I've got nothing, no words, nothing pretty. I'm just a lost fucking soul and you've put your hand on me and made me yours. And if you pull your hand away, I'll still be yours. I'm just yours, helplessly, forever, without any artistry or ease or grace.

"I haven't loved many people. I don't know how I am supposed to do this, what I am supposed to do. I hated my aunt, as you probably know. My relationship with my father could be best described as complicated. Before you the only person I could say I loved was my mother. I don't even like a lot of people. Theo. Blaise, though I've no idea where he's gone off to. Your friend Ginny, oddly enough. Millie, though she and Pansy quickly, publicly distanced themselves from me after the War so that probably doesn't count anymore. I saw them both, once, in a shop. Millie said she couldn't believe I had the indecency to show my face, that I should be locked up." His voice catches for a moment. That had been the first time, after the War, after his father had been sentenced, that he'd realized no one would stand by him. That he was alone. "I'd really thought we were friends.

"Of course, if I'm being honest, I probably would have done the same. We save our own necks, we Slytherins. We don't risk ourselves. When I think about my mother, lying to Voldemort, what that could have cost her - she would have been grateful for death at the end, I just can't … but not you, oh, no, you'll defend anyone. House elves, your stupid friends, worthless, filthy, Death Eater me. Not Pansy, though." He laughs, a low, raw sound that chokes out of him. "A bit of the dark witch in you, there. I never would have expected that but you don't play by the rules, do you? Not other people's rules. So fucking noble, but you'll steal and lie and cheat if you think the ends are worth it.

"I love that about you.

"I - that you accept me, darkness and all – I don't know. I don't know. It's some kind of gift that I don't deserve but I'm so grateful, so fucking grateful. I can't – I can't not be this person. That you love _this person_, this petulant, angry, terrified person – I was so afraid, when you found out I shut that restaurant down that you'd be, I don't know, righteously angry, maybe? Afraid. Afraid of me. That you'd walk away. I guess I'm not afraid of that anymore. As hard as it was to believe, I think you're really okay with that part of me, that you can see the manipulative controlling side and not be afraid, even still see me as a good man.

"Even though I'm really probably not."

"If wanting to kill that woman is enough to damn a person, I'm damned too," Hermione's sleepy voice murmurs. "You didn't kill her. I didn't kill her. I think we're good."

"How long have you been listening."

"Long enough."

Silence twines back around their ankles, snaking like a cat going round and round and he feels her hand reach for his, her fingers slip into his. Then, "I love you, too, you know. Very much." She's tugging him, pulling him over onto her. "I love you," she says again, and lifts her face to his and the kiss is slow and infinitely sweet. He can feel her tongue twist about his, lick at him, her lips move under his mouth. Finally he groans and presses his forehead into hers. He can feel tears gathering at the corner of his eyes, clinging to his lashes. "I'm going to put our world at your feet, Hermione Granger."

"My bare feet."

"What?" She's startled a laugh out of him.

"When you lay the world at my feet, no heels. You know how I feel about high heels."

"Permission granted, then?" He brushes one of her errant curls out of her eyes and can feel her nodding.

They lay in the uterine darkness, his body half draped over hers, her head up against his shoulder, and he listens to her breathe, feels the salt drip down his cheek.

. . . . . . . . . .

**A/N – Thank you all for reading. Big internet hugs to my reviewers because seeing your thoughts really makes my day: Cat130, Lady Mariel, Darc-lover, MCannon5887, Guest (I'm glad the asterisks work!), . , Naysaykaybay (I can't PM you a personal thank you because you have PMs turned off so please accept this public thanks!).**

**I was doing my "annoying special education parent researching" thing and stumbled upon an article claiming writing has the same effect on the brain as meditation. This might explain why we all do it. Writing, I mean. Not meditation. I did not, however, check the citations, just went with the conclusion I liked. **

**I've started a second multi-chapter fic (hey, I need a LOT of meditation) with a much less pleasant Hermione if you like your Dramoine a bit more on the dark and political side…**


	31. Chapter 31 - A Brief Note from Narcissa

_Dearest Hermione,_

_Nice work._

_Much Love,_

_~ N_

. . . . . . . . . .

Hermione shoves the note across the table to Draco. "Your mother's custom of knowing everything is sometimes a bit tiresome."

"It _is_ a damnable habit, I agree." He doesn't look up from the business section.

"Some day I expect to get a note congratulating me on expecting before we even know if the rabbit has died."

"Do muggles still use rabbits? Really?" He looks suddenly interested.

"It's just an expression."

"Oh."

"Draco." She sighs. "Try not to forget we're leaving for the cottage this afternoon."

"I assume my mother knows about that, too?"

"She sent an elf over to clean the place and stock the kitchen, so, yeah, I'm thinking she does."

'Wait, you let an elf, an enslaved magical creature, clean your house?" Now Draco has put the paper down and is smirking at her.

Hermione mutters, "Have you ever tried telling Mopsy 'no'?" and the man's smirk blossoms into first a grin, then a snicker, and finally an undignified guffaw and she glares at him as he laughs at her over the morning paper.


	32. Chapter 32 - At the Cottage

Hermione leans on the doorframe of Draco's office, knocking lightly. When he looks up she says, "We're leaving for the cottage in two hours so find a good stopping place."

He leans on his hand and looks at her and she smiles, caught, as always, by just how absurdly perfect he looks, by how much she loves him. "How many books are you bringing?"

"Just a couple."

"Just a couple 'two' or just a couple 'seventeen'?" He raises his eyebrows.

"I've never brought seventeen!"

"You have." He looks back at his paperwork with a grimace. "I counted last time."

"Well, not seventeen because Theo will be there."

"Did I somehow miss that part of the weekend's plans?"

"Well, I was going to invite him AND Luna but - " she hedges.

"Do I know Luna?"

"Yes, of course, but I'm sure you've forgotten her name because you are almost sociopathic that way." She rolls her eyes.

"People don't interest me." He shrugs.

"My point exactly."

"ANYWAY, I was inviting the two of them – your mother and I agree they'd probably get along –

"Oh my gods. You're matchmaking with my mother." He's heard the phrase 'recoil in horror' before but he is suddenly struck with appreciation for how apt it is.

" - but Luna can't make it. She is coming to the tea thing your mother is having with us and Theo when we get back but she's working on getting a monograph in under deadline and can't come this weekend. So it's just going to be the three of us."

He laughs. "Tell me, my dear. Is your _goal_ a threesome?"

She stares at him. Is this some pureblood thing she's supposed to know about? She still can't always tell when it's Draco being difficult in order to amuse himself and when it's a casual echo of his childhood coming out in some strange way.

"Because I can tell you," the man continues, "that, if it's just the three of us at an isolated, seaside cottage for the weekend, Theo's going to assume that's on the table."

"There are other bedrooms. He is staying in one of the _other bedrooms_."

"There's always the table," he drawls.

"Oh, you!" She throws a wadded up piece of paper at him. "Just be ready to go, and tell your lifelong friend I am _not_ on the table."

"Nope. I'm looking forward to watching you wriggle your way out of that one. Besides, what if I'd rather like you on the table? I'll even promise to keep surface stability in mind."

"Luna was supposed to be there!" She pauses and then adds, "Besides, I don't think a threesome on a table would be very comfortable."

"Then let the wriggling commence." As she turns to stalk out of the room he adds, "I'd settle for the bed…" right as she slams the door.

. . . . . . . . . .

When Theo arrives he hands a case of wine to Draco and an old book to Hermione. "Wine for you, and an old, probably cursed, book for you, my dove."

She takes the volume carefully, then rapidly sets it on a table, eyeing it with foreboding. "Where did you get this?"

"From the family seat, of course. You surely don't think you're the only one with nasty little books lying around. If you ever want to come and liberate volumes that interest you, I would be delighted to show you my library."

"Is that anything like 'come upstairs and see my etchings'?" Hermione dimples at Theo who grins wickedly back at her.

"I have no idea what you're talking about. If, however, you are hinting you'd like to show me etchings I would never be so uncouth as to turn you down."

Draco has flung himself down into one of the myriad stuffed chairs, wine on the floor, and drawls, "I thought you'd at least wait until after dinner, love."

"Don't be ridiculous," Hermione heads towards the porch and, beyond it, the sand. "This dress requires ironing so I'm certainly not going to crush it against any table."

"I didn't realize the dress would be necessary."

Theo watches them banter, his mouth curled into a grin. "Was crushing the fair maiden into the table part of the planned entertainment?"

"I think the entertainment is the beach. And the wine you brought. And if you're not nice to me, I'll pull out Scrabble."

As she walks away she hears Theo ask, "What's Scrabble? And was that a stomp? Did she actually just stomp down the steps?"

"I think it was more of a sashay." Draco has deliberately raised his voice so she can hear him and she stomps her foot on the sand, trying not to laugh.

. . . . . . . . . .

"Does it have to be a game that involves catching spherical objects as they rapidly approach my head? Really?" Hermione sputters about ten minutes into some idea of Draco's that, as far as she can tell, involves her repeatedly failing to catch a ball while both men shout encouragement in the form of conflicting suggestions. Both insist that this is a child's game, that they'd played it as soon as they could walk, that it's really very easy. "Why did I have to start dating an _athlete_?"

"Hey, you knew what I was when you asked me to move in. Besides, you've threatened me with Scrabble." He laughs at her even as he grabs the ball from Theo in some complex maneuver that might be cheating, though she's not sure. The rules of this game seem to keep shifting. His happiness is almost contagious. Almost. Really? A ball?

"Yes, well, apparently I had neglected to think the consequence of that suggestion through to the bitter, logical end: my humiliation at sport. I will get even, you know. I know where you sleep."

"It's not my fault you are as coordinated as a 3-legged sloth." He tosses the ball back at her, she ducks, and it flies past her into the water. "You are going to get that, right?"

"You threw it!" she objects.

"And you missed it," he smirks back at her. "Does this mean you concede?" he asks when she doesn't move and, with a glower, she steps into the water – the cold water - and starts to wade out towards the ball which slowly floats further and further from shore.

Ball finally in hand she says, "Come get it."

"Come on, Hermione, throw it back," coaxes Draco, but she purses her lips and shakes her head.

"You want it back? Come and get it." She weighs the ball in her hand, looks over her shoulder towards the ocean, looks back at with a smirk of her own at the very dry Draco Malfoy standing on the shore in his bare feet.

"I wouldn't test her, mate." Theo is laughing as he gives Draco a shove towards the water. "You want that ball back, I think you're going to have to go get it before she tosses it even further out."

"It's _wet_," the man mutters.

"Water usually is. Of course, you could always just let her win," Theo suggests and, with that, Draco plunges into the calm water. Hermione starts backing up, deeper into the ocean, and when the man finally reaches her she tosses the ball back over his shoulders towards the shore.

"You…" he growls, then yelps as she grabs his hand and yanks him towards her. With Draco down and sputtering, soaked from head to toe she starts to race back towards the shore, towards the ball, only to be scooped up and set back behind the now wet blond. She hurtles herself at him and the force of her momentum knocks him forward again and she's scrabbling over him towards the ball just as Theo reaches forward and picks it up.

"I win."

"Fine. I," Draco announces, standing up with immense, dripping dignity, "am going to go change." Hermione waves him off, back towards the cottage, and joins Theo up the beach. She perches next to him on a fallen tree, long since turned into bleached bone by the sea, and starts wringing water out of her hair.

"Thank you," murmurs Theo, "for giving him back to me." Hermione looks confused and the man continues. "When I saw him, a few years before you, he was broken, turned in on himself. Not that I was, or am for that matter, in any great shape but he was pretty bad. Now, well, look at him."

"I am." Draco, soaked to the skin, is stalking back to the cottage, t-shirt clinging to him. "Trust me, I am."

Theo laughs and looks at the woman. Hermione, equally wet, is just as eye catching with her dress clinging to every curve, but she seems happy to sit and dry in the last bits of sun. "I'm quite serious. He's laughing. He's playing. He's in a short-sleeved shirt. You've been really good for him." He turns to look back at the ocean. "You're a rare woman, Hermione. Not many people would give him a chance. Would give me a chance."

"He still wears long sleeves when we're out in London, no matter how hot it is," she says quietly, and they sit for a long while before she continues. "About that. I'd invited someone here with us this weekend, but she couldn't make it. She'll be at the little thing with Narcissa when we get back."

"You're matchmaking with Narcissa." He says, flatly. Then he starts to laugh, quietly at first and then uproariously. "Are you _sure_ you're muggle-born?"

"Quite," she says, offended.

"Oh, don't be that way, love. It's just… it's _such_ a pureblood girl thing to do, plotting to make good marriages over little tea parties with doting matriarchs." He takes his finger and draws it up her arm. "Does this mean my salacious hopes for this weekend are all going to come to naught?"

She twitches his hand off her arm. "Are you _always_ this much trouble?"

"Yes." He leans back, casually watching her but under that placidity lurks a hint of roiling turbulence. "Tell me about this girl you've decided to throw at me."

She sighs. "She's very bright, a bit odd."

"And you decided, interfering termagant that you apparently are, that I needed nothing more than to meet her? That springing her on me unannounced was a clever way to go about it? Did it occur to you to ask if I even wanted to meet this girl? Any girl?" He can hear himself getting louder and consciously forces his volume back down. "Women don't like me, Hermione. Death Eater's son, remember?"

He's tired, really tired, of having women go from flirtatious to, at best, awkwardly polite when they realize who his father is. Once he'd started to catalog the standard ways people found of finding somewhere else they absolutely had to be when they caught his name; he'd stopped because he'd realized that couldn't possibly be emotionally healthy. Will this one stay for the whole little tea party with Narcissa, he wonders, afraid of giving offence, or will she remember she has to leave early. Maybe, he thinks bitterly to himself, this one will become suddenly, unfortunately ill. Most horrifying of all, maybe she'll be one of the Death Eater groupies, perverse, inevitably ignorant, fans of the wretched movement.

He slumps over on their tree, just thinking about it. Thank you, pater familias, he thinks, for making me permanently unlovable. "Do not do this to me, not you. I'm begging you," he mutters. "I'm not made for sportive tricks, Hermione."

"Oh please. Richard the Third? You're not a deformed villain, spare me the matinee tragedy."

She rolls her eyes and he laughs at her, at how she's teased him out of his mood with just one disparaging comment, at how easily she catches the reference. "You'd prefer 'my heart did fly to your service'?"

"Not my service."

"Oh yes, Hermione, your service." He takes her hand and kisses the inside of her wrist and adds lightly, "No one else would have me, sweetling."

"I'm surprised…"

"… that I can throw around Shakespearean quotations? I am generally considered a fairly well-read man, you know. Or is it that I lay prostrate at your pretty feet that surprises you?"

"I do hate to quibble when you're being poetic like this, but, technically, you're not prostrate; you're sitting next to me. And, while you know I find you adorable, Theo, lying at my feet seems excessive. Maybe you should try to dial back the flirtation enough to at least remain upright."

Draco, dried, redressed and returning, laughs as he crosses the last few yards of sand and scoops her up and off the tree, pulling her hand out of Theo's, who's kept a light grip on her. "Now that he knows you find him even remotely appealing, he's never going to stop."

"Has he always been like this?"

"Oh, yes."

"Does he mean it?"

The two men exchange a look and just as Theo says, "My dove, how can you doubt me?" Draco mutters, "If history is any guide…." He sets her down, frowning. "You're still really wet." He brushes ineffectually at his new shirt, as if the water soaking into it was dirt.

Hermione shakes her head, flicking more water from her hair onto him.

"Gods, it's like you're a wet dog or something," Draco complains as Theo laughs again.

"Serves you right for throwing that ball way out there and telling me to fetch it." She pokes him in the chest, then turns. "I'm tired of being wet and clammy and I'm going to go change, dry off, make a sandwich and open a bottle of wine." Draco leans in, kisses her on the back of the neck, pulling her hair off to the side as he does it. "Dinner is some assembly required, gentlemen; I assume you're both capable."

"Gentlemen?" Draco raises an eyebrow. "That's quite an assumption."

"Don't make me bring out the Scrabble."

. . . . . . . . . .

Hermione has settled herself, dry and dressed with her legs crossed, on the porch swing; she's holding a tumbler of wine in one hand, a book held in her lap by the other; she's tucked a plate with the remaining bits of a sandwich under the swing. "Am I forgiven for trying to match-make?"

Theo sighs and settles into another chair on the porch and looks at her. "I'd forgive you anything, love. Do I have a choice?"

"Always." Her voice is low, almost lost under the quiet monotony of the waves hitting the sand. "Has it really been that bad?"

He shrugs in the dimming light as she marks a place in her book – not the book he'd given her, he notices - and drops it to the ground. They sit, Hermione watching him in silence, as Draco moves inside and fixes up two more plates of cold cuts. After he takes his sandwich Theo says quietly into the space she's made, "Yes."

"It's not fair," she whispers.

"Life isn't fair."

Draco slips in beside her, waits for her to lean her head onto him. They shift and adjust until she's tucked into him and, at last, Hermione says, "If it's any consolation, Luna won't be at all interested in your father. If she decides she doesn't care for you, well, she'll probably tell you, but it won't be because of old history."

He sighs. "Forgive me, my dear, for doubting your veracity but, as they say, I will believe that when I see it." He stares at the sandwich Draco has handed him, rips off a tiny bit of bread and tosses it over the porch railing; he watches a bird sidle up to it before making a mad dash to grab it and fly away.

"What was it like," Theo asks, suddenly. "What was it like to be on the right side? What's it like to be loved by the masses instead of hated?"

Hermione shivers against Draco. "Mostly awful."

He waits for her to go on. "People talk about heroism but they never seem to mention that heroics are mostly being cold and scared and hungry." She takes a big swallow from her glass. "Then, when you're doing something other than hiding and waiting, when you do get a sudden rush of adrenaline and aren't scared, it starts to feel good, so good not to be afraid, even if afterwards you want to throw up and are shaking so much you can barely stand. You start to worry you're starting to like the rush, start to worry that makes you sick.

"Everything is always uncertain. You don't know whom to trust and you're terrified if you make the wrong decision you'll end up back on the floor of the manor. For a while, after the war, I couldn't even choose what to read, couldn't choose what to eat. I was so scared the wrong decision meant… And I was afraid of shadows, loud noises, women in black dresses. Hell, it took me years to move the couch so it wasn't against the wall, to believe someone wouldn't come at me from behind." She's drinking steadily now, wine glass in one hand and bottle in the other, and Draco has pulled her tightly against him, his cheek resting on the top of her head, curving around her as a shelter.

"Then, afterward, everyone wants to tell you how fabulous you are, but you're shaking at every ceremony and someone comes onto the stage and your first thought is how to use the podium as a barricade, what's the best way out if you have to start running." She fills her glass again.

"You get loved for things no one understands, and all you want to do is cower away. Your best friends end up alcoholic and on anxiety medication, afraid to leave the house. That's what it's like to be on the right side." Another swallow. "Bet you wish you'd signed up for that little program, huh?" Another swallow. "On the other hand, finding people to have sex with was always pretty easy, so there's that. Of course, they all want to use you for your fame or just be able to say they had you, but at least they don't act like you're a plague carrier."

"I'm sorry," he says, watching her intently, memorizing her.

She drains her glass and promptly fills it. "Don't be. You didn't send me into the woods to die, armed with a book of fairy tales."

Theo looks at Draco, who picks his head up and mouths "Dumbledore".

"If it's any consolation, you wouldn't have wanted to live if your side had lost. Of course, you probably wouldn't have lived for very long so at least your misery wouldn't have lasted."

"I wouldn't recommend going into counseling as a career choice," Hermione mutters.

"I, my sweet, have been spared the burden of earning a living."

"So, what was it like to grow up a Death Eater?" She hesitates. "I mean, with a Death Eater. For you."

Theo's graceful slouch momentarily stiffens. There's a bird – diver maybe - calling out over the water and he waits for the haunting sound to fade before he says, lightly, "Nothing you would want to hear about, lovely. Suffice to say, I was raised to despise you. Lessons on hatred and endurance tucked between mandatory penmanship practice and time with a dancing master."

"Dancing master?"

"But of course. If one stomps the meek of the earth into the ground, one should do it gracefully and in time to the music."

"I don't believe you."

Theo rises to his feet, takes her hand and pulls her up. "I'll show you."

"I can't dance," she protests.

"All you have to do is follow." And she does. It's amazing; he twirls her around the porch and her feet seem to magically go where they are supposed to and her laughter, her joy at the movement, almost make the air sparkle. He chases away the shadows that haunt them both as he spins her. "Years of practice every Thursday and Saturday and, voila, I can make anyone graceful." He's stopped her and is looking down into her dark eyes. "Including a three-legged sloth." He lifts his hand to her face and his thumb traces her lips.

"I can't decide," she murmurs, her head spinning from the wine and the dancing, "if you are actually attracted to me or if I'm part of your little power game with Draco."

"Does it have to be one or the other?"

Draco has come up behind her and pulled her towards him, out of Theo's arms and into his. "You really should ask first," he drawls.

"But I'm not wholly sure I want to hear the answer," Theo laughs as Hermione says, head lolling back against Draco as the porch, for some reason she can't quite understand, sways off to the right, "Can I play games with you, Theo?"

The man shakes his head. "I don't think so, sweetling," he smiles at her. "All that wine has hit you pretty hard and seducing drunk girls is for amateurs and rapists."

"Love," Draco grins at her, "You're adorable and I adore you, but you couldn't even manage surface stability on the floor right now, much less play games with Theo and me. Let me get you safely into bed before you fling yourself off the porch."

"I'm an adult. I can stay up," she insists.

Draco lets her go and she immediately starts to fall to the left before he grabs her again. "I don't think so. Come on."

"Love you," she smiles up at Draco who looks at Theo, rolls his eyes, and starts bundling her off to their room.

"Good night, Hermione," Theo calls.

"'Night Theo," she singsongs back at him.

"…love you," he whispers after they're both inside and away. "Love you."

. . . . . . . . .

pater familias = male head of household

"But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks, / Nor made to court an amorous looking glass; / I, that am rudely stamped and want love's majesty" Richard III, Shakespeare

"The very instant I saw you, did / My heart fly to your service" The Tempest, also Shakespeare

. . . . . . . . . .

**A/N – Thank you, my lovely lovely reviews, and followers, and random people reading this all the way to the end. (Not that it's done, of course, but to the end of what we have.) This one was a bit of a bear to write; I think my brain vomited out three chapters in the other fic to avoid this one, that really didn't want to work. **

**Thank you, especially, to LadiePhoenix007, Guest, . , Ali0912, VeryBerry96, nikki98, likewhattt, Cat130, MCannon5887, LB123, Darc-Lover, Mistress-Cinder, thfourteenth. As you surely know by now, your words bring a big smile to my face.**

**I'm going to get briefly maudlin. When I started writing this I was confined to the couch recovering from surgery, in the grip of a hormonal roller coaster (thanks to said surgery) that felt appallingly like being 6 weeks pregnant and so in a miserable mood, and I hadn't written anything creative in about 20 years. You've made the last 2ish months much more fun with your follows and reviews and kind thoughts (and even your grammar corrections, which, goodness knows, everyone needs. It's hard to proofread your own work.) So… thank you.**


	33. Chapter 33 - Nightmare 7

**A/N: Trigger warning. **_Discusses rape and underage sex (neither of which take place in the chapter and neither of which the speakers condone, but they are discussed.) _

**. . . . . . . . . .**

Theo is still on the porch, sitting in the darkness, when he hears Hermione screaming. Without thought, without reason, he's in from the porch, racing to her, forgetting that the woman screaming from inside the cottage has someone already in her room, in her bed for godsakes. He's through the door of her room and sees Hermione upright, stiffly leaning against Draco, breathing heavily, rat's nest hair a crushed halo around her face in the bedside light. "It's okay," the blond mutters. "I'm not torturing her."

"I didn't think you were." Theo stands awkwardly in the doorway. You really shouldn't rush into a woman's bedroom in the middle of the night. "I wasn't even thinking, I just heard the screams and…"

"It's quite all right." Draco's trying to coax Hermione into relaxing, running his hands soothingly over her hair, murmuring into her ear.

"I'll go," Theo backs away. "You've clearly got it under control." But Hermione is holding out her hand, without even looking at him, pushing it at him, and so he eases tentatively towards them, takes her hand and feels her grab on, almost grinding his bones. Theo lowers himself to the floor, leans against their bed, his hand in hers. It's a ridiculously awkward position physically, socially and Draco's mouth quirks upward as he watches his friend try to shift around and find a comfortable way to sit without letting go of the woman's clutching hand.

"Theo," she whispers. "I'm sorry. I…"

"I was awake," he squeezes her hand. "It's nothing."

"It's not nothing." She takes her other hand, pulling it away from Draco, and wipes ineffectually at the wet streaks on her face, leaving the lines of water pulled not just down but also across.

"Shhh, love."

"Hand me the book," mutters Draco, and, twisting himself, Theo is just able to reach a worn paperback and pass it over. "Lie down, Hermione. Hold on to Theo while I read. We're both right here. It's okay, it wasn't real, you're safe." He pauses while she scrunches down, burrowing against him, still holding on to Theo, then he starts to read. "_She hoped to be wise and reasonable in time; but alas, she must confess to herself that she was not wise yet_."

Theo leans against the bed and listens as his oldest friend, probably his only friend, reads. He learns more about muggle courting mores – were they really that convoluted? No wonder Hermione was unfazed by Narcissa – than he'd ever planned on as Draco steadily reads page after page. He's finished the next chapter before the woman's hand has finally relaxed, before she's eased back into sleep.

Both men migrate, without speaking, to the porch, Draco grabbing a candle and a bottle, Theo picking up two glasses. On the steps, leaning against opposite sides of the railing, they sit with the little light flickering between them, liquid in their tumblers. "How often does she have them?"

"This bad?" Draco shakes his head. "I don't know, every few weeks, maybe." There's a pause. "You still having them?"

"Yeah. You?"

The blond man nods.

"That war was hell," Theo says, quietly.

"I think they're all hell, mate. I don't think anyone ever comes back from a war and says, 'Now _that_ one was a jolly good time.'"

"Your aunt probably did."

"She was not wholly stable." Draco swirls the liquid in his glass. The familial insanity haunts him, he's never not afraid one day it will snatch him.

"So," Theo's slouched against the railing with his head thrown back, looking at the sky. The clouds have moved in, washing out the stars, and the heavens are a blank slate above him. "Will I be wishing you two happiness any time soon? You do have a sacred obligation to produce a Malfoy heir. Better get on that."

"I don't know. I mean, of course, but - " he runs his hands through his hair. "It's one thing to say, 'oh, it's fine you were a Death Eater but you were a child, you weren't culpable' but she can't possibly understand what it's like to grow up in that world. How can I ask her to - "

But Theo shakes his head. "Don't underestimate her." A sigh. "Look, she obviously grew up without murderous psychopaths throwing parties at her house, but she lived through the war, she's no naïf. And, she knows you pretty well. How you found a woman who likes that you're a domineering, overbearing prick I have no idea, but, for the love of all the gods, don't let her slip through your hands."

"Why, because you'll scoop her up?"

"Do you want me to lie and say 'no'?" Theo looks up. "Look, not that it should need saying, but I'm not a cad. I'm not going to - "

"I know." He runs his hands through his hair. "I'm not sure you'd be unwelcome, though. It's not like we haven't - "

"Yeah, but you didn't love that girl and she sure as hell didn't love you. It's different."

"I suppose," Draco sighs. "Try not to be too hard on her about the thing with this girl, this what's-her-name. She's just trying to take care of you, to make you happy. She's going to keep going until she's solved the problem of you."

"Who else is wrapped up in this smothering mantle of meddling care?"

"Not many people. The trio. You. Me."

"Does this mean you're now best mates with the whole of the trio? Excuse me while I go choke on that irony. Love really does make fools of everyone."

"Hardly. You sure as hell will never see me dancing around the subject of whether Harry's coming into our bed. Talk about choking. All that terminal virtue of his? I'd sooner eat glass. And I think Ron's just waiting for me to screw up so he can kill me with a clear conscience."

"Well, you should be used to murderous cretins; hell, I think my father would have cheerfully killed Hermione just to protect you from muggle-born contamination and he would have thought – really genuinely thought – he was doing you a favor, like throwing away your pacifier so you wouldn't get bad teeth or something."

"Gods, when she asked what your childhood was like…"

"Were you afraid I'd tell her?"

"No, you're not that stupid. It's just… how can you possibly explain? 'So, yeah, my dad used to go out with his Death Eater buddies and over fine spirits and arguments about blood purity they'd take turns raping women and plotting how to best terrorize the country?'"

"I prefer to think the women involved were professionals doing a good job acting rather than girls terrorized into compliance." Theo shoves his feet into the sand. What a nightmare those parties had been; he'd been grateful every year to escape back to school so he wouldn't have to hear the sobs from the main floor whenever his father had entertained. He suspected - knew, really - that the broken women his father brought in for parties weren't being paid, but how else do you live in that world other than to lie to yourself that it's not really as bad as you think?

"They weren't," Draco mutters. "Professionals, I mean. I heard things in the Manor about how they were 'acquired'." He swallows a deep draught of wine.

What a brilliant confirmation, he feels like vomiting. "I might have liked to keep the illusion that my father was only mostly awful."

"Sorry."

"Well, it's not like your father was any better, though you'd think fear of your mother would have kept him away from some of the worst. I'd have thought Narcissa would castrate anyone who betrayed her."

"I don't think Lucius would have considered raping some terrified muggle girl at a Death Eater party to be cheating on my mother, any more than she would have considered her weekly massage appointment to be an affair. For that matter, it's not like she would have considered rapine as anything more than a mildly distasteful habit, not quite as bad as drinking too much." He eyes his glass. "She certainly would never have considered asking him to refrain. I mean, if he'd brought one of these little party favors into her home…"

"…castration."

"Exactly. But, well, boys will be boys when they're out together. You know my mother doesn't exactly concern herself with the feelings of the lesser orders. She might not go out of her way to kick a kitten or anything, but she doesn't really care about anyone."

"She likes you."

"She likes you too. Be afraid."

Theo slouches lower against the step railing. "Did I ever tell you my father told me I was weak for not salivating at the idea of raping as many girls as his little parties I could? He punctuated his opinion with his fists to ensure he had my complete attention."

"How old were you?"

"Fourteen."

"Fuck." Draco throws back a big swallow of the wine.

"That was the idea, yes. You got Voldemort. I got to live at party central because there was no lady of the house."

"I'm sure Vince and Greg would have enjoyed it."

"They did."

"I didn't need to know that." Draco thinks back on the boys who'd been his friends at school and cringes.

"How is it we're both reasonably functional human beings?" Theo holds his glass up so the light shines through it, making the wine glow a deep, bleeding red.

"Beats the crap out me. Which brings me back to, how can I ask a woman to marry me when I come from _that_? What if I turn into my father, Theo? Or yours? I'm already not quite what one would call a warm and caring person. What if one day I wake up and I'm fully a monster? Serving good food at little parties where I destroy people just because I can?"

"I don't think that's going to happen; you aren't Lucius. You're much more like your mother; cold and uncaring and brilliant, yes, but you're not actually vicious."

"I'm not sure that's much better. Theo, I've seen things, done things, that I don't even want her to imagine. What she did experience in that war, well, you just saw what the fallout of that is, years later. But growing up in that world, having Voldemort live in my house – trust me when I tell you what she saw was nothing."

"So what?"

Draco stares at the other man across the candle flame.

"So bloody what," Theo continues. "You don't think I'm sitting here pure as the driven snow either, do you? Do you think I sit up, awake, late at night because I have the same thing for astronomy you do? Don't be an idiot. You have," he snaps, "managed to find a human being in this world who knows who you are and likes you anyway; maybe she doesn't know every last detail of the horrors of those years but she's no fool and I'm quite sure she can extrapolate quite a bit more than you've told her. If it were me I wouldn't be out here nattering on whether I might lose my mind in the future; fuck, if you didn't lose it during that war, I think you can assume you're good to go in the sanity department. If it were me, I'd have a ring on her hand and I'd be thanking all the gods that somehow I'd gotten lucky enough to still be loved despite my shithole history. Gods, do you have any idea how lucky you are?"

He gets up and looks down at his friend. "I'm not a cad, but I don't really do noble self-sacrifice either. Break her heart and I'll be there to pick up the pieces, understand?"

When he walks back in he stops, briefly, outside Hermione's door. The light's still on, it's silent. After a moment he keeps going to his own room.

. . . . . . . . . .

The book is Jane Austen's _Persuasion_.

**A/N** _Thank you, again (and again, and again) to everyone who's reading along. I know that this one was a pretty bleak update. When they get up in the morning it should be a little more fun._

_FirstLadyofLiterature, Pari Passu, Mistress-Cinder, Darc-Lover, dulce de leche go, thfourteenth, Jiminee, LB123, MCannon5887, ElleLeigh, Delancey654, pagyn, KinaidBade, Honoria Granger, shaymars, Stardust923, LadiePhoenix007: thank you all for your reviews. It really does bring a giant smile to my face when someone likes this fic enough to comment._


	34. Chapter 34 - By the Light of the Moon

**A/N – **_Some explicit stuff._

. . . . . . . . . .

"Mrs. Malfoy," Luna smiles. "How kind of you to invite me over. I haven't seen you since I was a prisoner in your basement."

"Such an awkward time, I'm sorry," Narcissa responds with her cool smile neatly in place as she welcomes the pretty blonde woman to her tea party. She's already fussed over Draco and Hermione and shown Hermione the library at the townhouse; she's had easily a third of the books from the Manor moved to town and they fill the room. Hermione had run her fingers over the spines of the books. "It was so thoughtful of you to move these here," she'd said while Narcissa watched her.

"No, you're not." Luna drifts into the small sitting room where one table has been laid for tea, wandering past Narcissa. "Not really. It's okay, though. If you did it again, Draco would let me out this time. He's braver now." The blonde girl looks at Draco who himself looks awkwardly at Hermione. Turning to the last man in the cozy room Luna adds, "You must be Theo. Hermione told me she was going to introduce me to you, which seemed odd to me because she doesn't really do well in groups of people. She must really like you to be willing to have a gathering with – four? Five? – people all in one place just to have us meet."

Theo looks at the girl smiling up at him. She's tiny, with little feathers tied into her hair and she's actually looking at him with neither disdain nor morbid fascination. "Why feathers, lovely lady?" he asks, taking refuge in manners and bowing over her hand.

"Because hope, of course," she tucks her hand into his. "It seemed a good choice. I'm Luna."

Theo looks at the others, helplessly, but Hermione has turned her back on the pair of them and has her head bent towards Narcissa. Draco's examining his shoes with what appears to be utter and absolute fascination and is clearly not going to rescue him. "Umm, what are you hoping for?" he asks as she leads him to one of Narcissa's dreadful little settees.

"Oh, lots of things. I delivered a monograph to the publisher today, so I hope that goes well. I hope the tea isn't too hot; so many people make it badly. And," she shrugs, "I hope we become friends."

"Us?" He's quite sure this girl has no idea who he is; he didn't realize anyone lived under a rock quite that much but he cautions himself not to get attached, not to hope. As soon as she puts the pieces together, as soon as she realizes he's, if not quite a war criminal than about as close as one can get without - a bitterly consoling thought - having actually done anything, she'll escape, fly away on those feathers of hers.

"Yes." Another one of those smiles; this girl has the most beautiful smile. It crinkles her mouth up, ever so slightly unevenly, squinches her nose a little, and warms her eyes. It's a smile with absolutely nothing held in reserve, no caution, no walls, nothing. Even Hermione, he thinks, has barriers up when she smiles at him. Even Hermione, who he knows loves him, who fell asleep holding his hand. How can anyone be this open? How can anyone be this happy to meet him? "I don't have a lot of friends," she's saying as he watches her. "I know people, of course, but I'm the girl who gets the wedding invitation but isn't asked to be part of the bridal party. It would be nice to have a friend, someone to go out for tea with. And pudding."

"Did I know you in school?" He asks.

"Probably not. I knew who you were but you were a few years older than me and we didn't ever have classes together." She's looking around. "This is a lovely house but you'd think this seat would be more comfortable."

"Narcissa likes to make people uncomfortable and then watch them try not to say anything." He pauses, and then blurts out. "I don't have a lot of friends either."

"Why not?" She cocks her head to the side and looks at him. "You seem nice enough. Hermione likes you, and she pretty much hides away from the world. She thinks the books will shield her from anything bad, like a charm. They don't work like that though."

Well, might as well get it out there, he thinks. "My father was a Death Eater. He's in prison. Most people prefer not to, not to…" he's stammering and she looks confused.

"I can see why that might mean he wouldn't have a lot of friends, though the Death Eaters seemed pretty chummy to me. I guess you wouldn't have a lot of social time in prison, though." She's studying him, and he squirms under her gaze. "Why does that mean you don't have friends? Are you a Death Eater too?"

"I, well – no." he trails off, still pinned under her curious look.

"You aren't going to refuse to be friends with me because of your father, are you?"

"No," he gathers himself up. "It's more that I expect you would not want to have anything to do with me. Most people don't."

"Oh." Her voice sounds so sad and he jerks back. "That's horrible. To blame you for your father. I mean, you can't even really blame a parent for the actions of their child and it makes no sense at all to blame a child for the parent. It's not like he's contagious, or you are. You must feel really alone." She's fumbling with one of her feathers, tugging it out of her hair.

"I – yes." He watches her unwinding one of her feathers in confusion. "What are you doing?"

She takes the feather, which has a couple of long blonde hairs still clinging to it, and tucks it into his pocket. "Some hope for you."

He takes her hand, before she can pull it back, and turns it over, presses his lips to her palm. "Thank you."

"You're welcome." Her smile is back and he reaches his other hand up and brushes it over the slightly higher corner of her mouth. "Do you think the tea will be bad? Is it like the furniture?"

"I don't know," he traces his fingers on that smile, still not letting go of her hand. "Why doesn't it bother you, my parentage?"

"Why would it?" It's the genuine confusion in her eyes that undoes him.

"It comes with baggage," he can't let her hand go, can't take his fingers away from her lips, feeling her shape words under his touch even as he hears himself trying to warn her away.

"People think I'm crazy," she shrugs. "We all have baggage now."

He gives up. Hermione was right, damn her. She's going to be far too smug when he tells her that, but that will have to wait because he's not going to sit here and let this magical girl be dissected over tea by Narcissa Malfoy, of all people. He takes his fingers off her lips and tugs on her hand. "Come on, they're being very careful to not pay any attention to us and I know where I can take you for a perfect tea, not too hot, comfortable seats. Maybe even pudding. Let's be horribly, disgracefully rude and escape while we can." That smile again and then he's pulling her out the door and they're running down the stairs and into the street and she's laughing. He picks her up and swings her in a circle just to hear her laugh again, and she does, and when he sets her down and looks down into her face, into that crooked smile, he wonders what she tastes like and how long it will be until he finds out. He glances up at the townhouse and Hermione's in the window watching them; he blows her a kiss and then looks back at the woman at his side. "So, tell me about this monograph."

. . . . . . . . . .

Draco leans over and kisses her neck and Hermione sighs and tilts her head, giving him more access and he trails a line of small kisses down until he reaches her shoulder. "Do you think it worked," he asks.

"Oh yes," she turns to him, rolling onto her hip in the bed, twining her fingers in his hair. "Theo aches to love someone, and be loved in return. All he needed to fall helplessly was one person who saw him without pity or fear and it wouldn't occur to Luna to feel either of those things. She'll have him enchanted by the time the leaves fall."

"As enchanted as I am?" Draco takes her loose hand and closes his fingers about her wrist, then reaches for her other hand, kissing each finger tip before he pins that wrist too and watches her; with her arms held above her head she's smiling at the man holding her down, smiling at him, with such trust he thinks his heart will shatter.

"You make me so happy," she looks up at him, "I'm just so happy with you. I'm afraid, sometimes, that I can't keep this much simple joy in one place without breaking. What did I do to deserve this much love?"

"Oh, you won't break," he slides his hands down her arms, looks at her hands and says, "stay" when she starts to move them. He undoes each button on her blouse, kissing the exposed skin, reaching behind her back, which she obediently arches up for him so he can unhook the clasp of her bra. "Nothing breaks Hermione Granger. Not war, not torture, certainly not me." He slips his hands under the undone bra, cupping her warm skin and brushing his thumbs across her nipples, smiling as she inhales sharply and bites down on her lip. "What do you want, love?" he murmurs. "Gentle, or not so much?"

"I think," she peers up at him through her lashes, "after a weekend of Theo you might need something not so gentle."

"It frightens me, sometimes, how well you know me." He straddles her, then, and traces his fingers down each side of her face. "But are you sure? What do _you_ want?"

"Right now? I think I'd rather like to see your face as you lose control, that smile you get right before you're lost to the world? I want to see that. Give me that, Draco."

He lifts the fabric of her shirt, shifts it back and forth between his fingers and looks at her, smirking. "How attached are you to this outfit?" he asks her.

"Not especially."

"Good."

. . . . . . . . . .

"You are amazing." He's rubbing the red marks on her wrists where she'd pulled against the blouse he'd used to tie her to the bed. She'd begged frantically, desperately, that he stop teasing her, threatened him, nearly ripped herself free she'd fought so hard. The time he'd stopped to check if she were truly OK, though, was the one time she'd gotten spitting mad. "Don't infantilize me, you prick," she'd hissed. "Get me off!"

"Ask more nicely," he'd suggested, watching her carefully and relaxing only when she smiled a slow, languorous smile that did dangerous things to his heart, as well as other parts of his anatomy. She'd promptly gone back to pleading with him, every whimper he forced from her pushing him further into a sexual haze that ended after she'd screamed his name and convulsed around him, after he rode her, panting, after he gave her that smile she wanted, let her see him lose control.

Now she laughs, "Oh, you're not such a burden to me either, you know."

"I worry I'll hurt you," he says because her wrists really do look bad and because he does worry that he'll push her too far. But she's scoffing at him.

"Oh, please. You're so concerned you stop and check I'm okay every five minutes –

"Hardly every five," he mutters.

" – and I'm _fine. _More than fine. Trust me, I'll tell you if I'm not. Draco, you're not the only one who likes this, you know. I'm not humoring you.

He pulls her against him then, buries his face in her hair and feels her breathing against his skin, feels her hand on his skin, her thumb making slow circles over the bone of his hip. "Trust me," she murmurs into his chest. "You can, you know. I'm not going anywhere but to you. 'My river runs to thee_._'I'm on your side, completely. Always and forever. I am that place you come where you don't have to hide who you are. I know you, good and bad. I've seen you at your worst – yes, I have – and also here, reading muggle romances to a woman you barely knew anymore because she was afraid in the night. You asked once - " she pushes back a little and looks up at him, "what if I didn't like who you were, if I fixed you and you were a right bastard. Draco - "

He's biting his lip and watching her. "I'm still so afraid of who I am," he whispers. "That I'll do something, go too far, be too cold, too brutal. That you'll realize I'm not salvageable, that I'm not – "

"I don't care. I'm not leaving. I know who you are, and I know what you're capable of, and I love you, all of you, not only the good parts, not in spite of your darkness. I'm not squinting a little to make that part of you disappear when I look at you."

"Really?"

"Some day you'll believe me." She sighs, then pushes him back and sits up. "Until then, however, my profound disappointment in your ongoing neurosis can be bought off with food. I'm starving. Get me curry or face my wrath."

"No energy for a round of gentle?"

"Not until _after_ I eat, no."

"Witch." He sits up and looks at her, tousled and so very clearly ravished. "You might want to clean up a bit before we go out in search of this mythical curry."

. . . . . . . . . .

**A/N**

_**First, the citations:**_

"'_Hope' is the thing with feathers -That perches in the soul –" Poem 314, Emily Dickinson _

_My River runs to thee. / Blue sea, wilt thou welcome me? (Also Emily Dickinson. It's an Emily kind of chapter.)_

_**Then…**_

_As always, and I know I say it every time but I do truly mean it, thank you for reading, thank you for following, thank you for reviewing. It is a huge pleasure to read your thoughts, see that you have added my story to lists of things you like. Lots of internet love – I'd give you pumpkin chip cookies if I could – to: pagyn, Guest, BenedictBumbleButt, Blue Luver5000, FirstLadyofLiterature, Darc-Lover, Mistress-Cinder, MCannon5887, Daniela P, my name is mommy, MomsEscape, Cat130, Soprano and Bass, shaymars, andherestograce, LadiePheonix007, Elle Leigh and nikki98._

_**Finally…**_

_I continue to slog away at the rate of about 2 chapters per week for Lady of the Lake, my quasi-Dark Dramoine. (I mean, I think of it as dark but compared to the standards of DD, which can include casual murder and rapine, it's pretty tame even if Hermione is plotting to take over the world) I'd love you to go read that as well. _

_And now I shall shamelessly beg for your feedback. Please please please…._


	35. Chapter 35 - The Birthday Party

He fesses up when they reach the steps of the townhouse. "I didn't," he admits, "bring you over here just to show you the endless batches of books my mother has been carting in from the manor. It's a party. For you."

She stops at the bottom of the stairs; the rain has started to come down with more serious intent and neither had thought to bring an umbrella but, still, she stops and lets the rain soak into her hair and coat. "A party?"

"For your birthday." He hurries on. "Not a lot of people, just Harry and Ginny, Ron and Lavender, Theo. Probably Luna too, because as far as I know they've somehow morphed into one person, but even my mother has cleared out. I made her promise no cake, and made them promise no singing, so you won't ever be the center of attention."

"You got Harry to come into town?" she turns and looks at him. "And he and Ron are in the same room as Theo and no one's shouting?"

"Well," he grins. "I do have a little pull with Ginny. And Lavender. And you should know that Theo doesn't shout, he just leans against things and looks smug."

She laughs at that. "I do want to know, sometime, how you became such good friends with Ginny."

"I wouldn't call us friends, exactly." He nudges her up the steps. "We just recognize that we have the same goals."

"And those would be?"

"Your happiness. Potter's happiness." He shrugs. "Well, she might be the one who cares about the latter but I'm not actually averse to his being emotionally healthy and, plus, she scares me just a bit so I'm not going to cross her on that."

"Smart man."

"Yeah, well, we got him here but I'm not sure how long he'll stay, so stop wasting time out here on the stoop and get in there and see your friends."

. . . . . . . . . .

"So," Ginny puts her hand on her hip and cocks her head to the side. "You managed to get her here."

"Well," he drawls, "You did tell me you would, what was the phrase - 'hex your balls off'? – if she panicked at the last minute and didn't make it. Threats like that tend to motivate a man and no one's ever accused me of being insufficiently devious."

He's watching Hermione, who's thrown herself into Harry Potter's arms as though he's the best thing she's ever seen, and he's trying not to feel irked. It's one thing to understand their friendship intellectually but having to actually see how they adore each other makes his gut clench a little.

"Welcome to the club," Lavender snickers at his poorly hidden jealousy. "Spouses of the Golden Trio." She hands him a glass of wine.

"We're not married," he says absently.

"Why not?" Ginny demands. "You gave the woman a house, for godssakes. What's stopping you?"

"He gave her a house?" Lavender sounds incredulous.

"Sodding Malfoys." Ginny nods. "Can't just give people flowers or jewelry, have to overdo it."

He starts to sputter until he notices the gleam in her eye and then raises his glass in a mock salute. "You're an evil woman, Ginny Potter."

"You would know evil." She snags a starter off Lavender's plate, ignoring the other woman's huff of protest.

"And there's your answer." Both women look at him as if he's lost his mind. "The evil thing; how can you even want your friend to marry a bloody Death Eater?"

"Are you utterly daft?" Lavender rolls her eyes. "Men can be so stupid," she mutters at Ginny who nods. "I want to talk to someone sensible. Let's go corner Luna, separate her from her own damaged bad boy; even she'll make more sense than this one. 'I'm too evil to marry Hermione, I'll just adore her and throw her parties while I wring my hands in indecision,'" she mocks.

. . . . . . . . . .

"So, it's love then," Ron pops another stuffed mushroom into his mouth and mumbles around it, "I mean, the ferret, 'Mione? Really?"

"Yep," she hands him a napkin and rolls her eyes. Ron's table manners – well, technically his cocktail party manners – remain remarkably similar to those you'd expect to see in toddlers. Lavender, she thinks, is a saint for tolerating it.

"Doesn't it bother you, how awful he used to be to you?"

"I think," she snags her own napkin and starter, "that in these situations a good memory is unpardonable."

"You're quoting something."

"Loosely, yes. And he has apologized. Profusely."

"You and your bloody books." He grabs another mushroom. "Do all the books everywhere make him as nuts as they would have made me?"

"No," Hermione smiles, thinking of Draco sprawled out in a chair in her shop, watching her sort books over the top of his own volume. It turns out that big chair is both stable and an excellent height for any number of wonderful and terrible things. "No, I think he likes the books. And the bookshop"

"Oh gods! The gooey look." Ron gives an exaggerated shudder then pulls her into a hug, napkin still in one hand. "As long as you're happy, I'm happy." He pauses to consider as he releases her and steps back. "Well, tolerant. I'm tolerant."

"What do I like, exactly?" Draco has come up behind Hermione. He wraps one arm around her, all possessive adoration. Watching her flirt with Theo, that's one thing. Hugging Weasley, who he holds in quiet contempt and probably always will, well, that's another. And, of course, if he's being honest, the knowledge that she'd dated the man, however briefly, chafes. At least she'd never thought of Potter as anything other than a brotherly friend.

"Books," Ron mutters though another mushroom. "Damned if I know why."

Draco shrugs. "They make her happy, so why wouldn't I like them?"

"I dunno, because they're dusty and heavy? And the weird smell?"

"And they bite," Draco adds. Ron looks startled and the blond adds, "She's got some nasty books in that shop. Don't touch the ones against the side wall."

Hermione's laughing as she leans against Draco. "You two. They only bite if you open them without taking proper precautions. They're perfectly safe for any responsible person to handle."

. . . . . . . . . .

"He loves you, you know." Luna's looking at the titles on the bookshelf, a collection of generally unexceptional art volumes.

"Draco?" Hermione looks at her in some confusion.

"No," Luna turns back and smiles. "Theo. And not like a sister either."

"Do you mind?"

"Of course not," Luna has turned again to the shelf and is pulling out a volume of photographs of Provence. "I have this book. It's not very good." She continues on, without stopping. "Love's not finite that way, and, besides, if he hadn't loved you I wouldn't have met him. You and Draco should go to France. Does he mind, do you think? About you and Theo?"

"I, uh, no." Hermione shakes her head. "I don't think so. I mean, he invited Theo here."

"That's good. I quite like him, you know."

"Theo?"

"No, Draco." She's slid the photography book back onto the shelf and is pulling out another one. "I rather love Theo, I think. This book is much better. Did you see this show when it was at the Tate?"

. . . . . . . . . .

"So, when did you know you loved her," Harry takes the glass from Draco and both men smile warily at one another; adulthood can only smooth so many of the edges from boyhood loathing.

"'It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I _had_ begun.'"

"Quoting?"

"From one of the books I read to Hermione at night."

"So," Harry looks uncharacteristically sly, "You aren't reading _Hogwarts: A History_ to her I take it."

Tricked into a laugh, Draco relaxes. A little. "Not quite, no. Even Hermione's not that cruel."

Harry takes a drink of the wine. "What are you reading her?"

Draco narrows his eyes. "Who knew you were so manipulative, Potter. You have the quote. Go look it up."

. . . . . . . . . .

"Love," Theo leans against the window sill and smiles down at her and she remembers Draco saying 'he leans on things and looks smug' and tries not to laugh. "Did you ever get the curses off that book I brought you to find out what it was?"

She sips from her wine. "Would you believe once I got the wards off of it that it turned out to be a commonplace book? Well, a kind of combination commonplace book and diary. Your great something-or-other grandmother really didn't want people reading it, based on the spells she used to protect it, but it's mostly shopping lists and some observations about her life. She doesn't seem to have been very happily married but there are some pretty funny anecdotes about misapplied rosemary jelly. Apparently she made it for her elderly father and it was supposed to help his short-term memory but all it did was inspire him to relate anecdotes from a fairly misspent youth, which she promptly wrote down. Purebloods of a few hundred years ago turn out to have been a fairly licentious bunch."

Theo reaches out a finger to touch her cheek. "How is it you take a volume no one has cared about for generations and turn it into a treasure?"

"I don't understand."

"No, I don't suppose you do." He blinks and shakes his head a little.

"Theo - " she hesitates.

"What, angel? Simply tell me what service you desire and I," he bows, "shall instantly do it."

"Picking up pieces?" Draco asks dryly, seeing them together.

"Anything broken?" Theo asks and when Draco snorts and replies, "Not that I know about," Theo just says, "then there's nothing to pick up, is there?" Both men exchange smiles and Hermione looks from one to the other. "What am I missing here?"

"Nothing, love," Theo pulls on one of her curls. "Just tedious displays of male dominance. You'll be happier if you ignore us both."

"I'm not one to ignore such sage advice," she mock scowls at them both. "And, besides, I think I need to go rescue Ron from Luna."

"Oh, let him suffer," Theo looks across the room with painfully naked adoration in his eyes. "She's doing it on purpose, anyway."

"Still," Hermione looks at them, "I think I'll gracefully extract myself from you two."

Draco joins Theo in leaning and the two men watch Hermione cross the room towards Luna and Ron. "She likes to torture Ron?"

Theo laughs and takes a sip from his drink. "She knows he thinks she's batty and so she plays it up and watches him squirm." A sidelong look. "Have you taken over the world yet?"

"Not quite, no. Working on it. My loving mother has informed me that sequestering myself away above a bookshop is an abdication of responsibility and, damn her, she's not totally wrong."

"She's most terrifying when she decides to be honest, isn't she?"

. . . . . . . . . .

Narcissa sits in the coffee shop, making a face over the foaming milk drink. Willingly chased away from the townhouse so Draco can throw his party, she's watching the rain slide down the windows, carving sparkling lines in the fogged up glass. "You came," the other woman sits down across from her. "I didn't think you would." She sets her bag down onto the floor with a thud. "Your owl was a surprise, to say the least."

"It was Draco's idea," Narcissa clenches her fists in her lap, though her face doesn't betray any tension, just looks serene and beautiful.

"Oh yes," the woman signals the waitress and places a rapid order for some convoluted drink. "The shining heir, last pure scion of both the Blacks and the Malfoys. Does it grate every day that he's shacked up with a _muggle_? How does it feel to know your grandchildren will be filthy half-bloods?"

"I was a child," Narcissa frowns at the other woman. "What was I supposed to do? Run away from home?" She picks up her cup, sips bitterly before wiping her mouth on her napkin. "Would you have really wanted a teenager in your house when you were a newlywed?"

"Did you know Bella murdered my daughter?"

"Yes, and I'm sorry, but I had my hands full keeping my own son alive."

The two women stare at each other across the table. Finally, "Why did you owl me."

Narcissa bites the inside of her cheek and narrows her eyes. The coffee shop, like all public venues, assured that any confrontation between them would be quiet, hissed. If they'd met at the manor, assuming such a meeting would even have been acceptable, thrown crockery would have been inevitable. Narcissa becomes stiller, more contained, when in the grip of strong emotions; people call it cold. Andromeda had always been more, well, demonstrative. Finally, Narcissa says, "Other than Draco, I've lost everyone I loved to our parent's ideology. It occurs to me, possibly - probably - too late, that, despite mother going into formal mourning for you as if she'd actually buried you, you aren't dead. That maybe we can be – civil – with one another."

Her sister accepts her drink from the waitress with a graceful smile, picks up her spoon and stirs it. The spoon clinks loudly on the inside of the cup. "Would you like to meet your grand-nephew." She sets the spoon down on the table. "His father was a werewolf, you know."

Narcissa recognizes a challenge when she hears one. "That would be lovely."

. . . . . . . . . .

When Narcissa returns to the townhouse Draco and Hermione both sprawl on one of the couches. A house-elf is tidying around them, Hermione clearly having lost that argument. Narcissa smirks; she's starting to take a perverse pleasure in forcing the woman to accept house-elf labor by simply encouraging the elves themselves to show how shocked and offended they are whenever Hermione tries to take over.

"Mother," Draco pulls himself up. "We'll get out of your way."

"Nonsense," she holds out her hand and Mopsy slips a wine glass into it almost immediately. "Let me at least enjoy one drink with you before you toddle off home. The party was a success, I take it?"

"Yes," Hermione has sat up and is trying to pull her hair up into a neat bun. Narcissa makes a quick mental note to teach the girl some simple hair styling charms. Honestly, you can take the girl out of the muggle world but you can't always take the muggle out of the girl. "Thank you so much for letting us use the townhouse. That was very thoughtful of you, especially since we ended up effectively kicking you out of your own home."

"Technically," Narcissa takes a sip, "because Draco is the heir, everything belongs to him."

"Really?" Hermione looks aghast. "Even though you're alive? How medieval!"

"Yes," Draco runs his fingers through his hair. "And if I suggested she move to the dower cottage she'd make Ginny look like a pushover. Technically mine is not the same as actually mine." He looks around. "I'm going to go find a sobriety potion before I apparate us home."

"In the bar, Draco," Narcissa watches him leave then turns to Hermione. "I've been meaning to ask you, how do you feel about the Black tradition of star names." She takes a delicate sip from her glass.

"Well," a shrug. "I've been told it's not really optional because deviating from it would cause you to go into a fit from which you might never recover."

Narcissa flicks a glance at her and then smiles calmly.

"Also, some astronomical names are quite nice," Hermione continues, "Andromeda, for example, is a lovely name."

"Indeed." Another sip of wine. "It might be a tad confusing at family gatherings, however."

"Perhaps." Hermione looks sideways at the formidable woman. "Would you be at these gatherings."

"Of course."

"Well then. Good."

Draco's returned. "I found some. Hermione, are you ready to leave?"

She reaches her hand out towards him and smiles back at Narcissa from the door. "I'm so glad."

"What was that all about?" Draco asks as they head down the steps.

"Nothing," Hermione shakes her head. "Just your mother being herself."

. . . . . . . . . .

_**A/N **__Draco and Hermione are, of course, quoting from Pride and Prejudice. If you have, for some unfathomable reason, not read that book yet, put down what you're doing and go get a copy. It's okay, I'll wait._

_Back now? As a lover of dramoine you will, trust me, love that book. I find myself jealous that you are about to experience it for the first time. If you are still in high school be sure to amuse yourself by ostentatiously reading it in front of English teachers. _

_Thank you for reading and reviewing and following and just in general being lovely. Your eyes on my words are the best compliment you could pay me. _

_Many thanks to everyone who reviewed me since I last posted: betweentheloins, LB123, pagyn, LadiePhoenix007, life is rolling keep on going, BenedictBumbleButt, Darc-lover, Naykaysaybay, Danikae, MCannon5887, Honoria Granger, Elle Leigh, dulce de leche go, Blue Luver5000, my name is mommy, nikki98, shaymars. You know I adore you all._

_One chapter to go…_


	36. Chapter 36 - The Ending

When the moon hangs low enough in the sky you see a long reflected streak in the water from the porch of the cottage. In London, surrounded by artificial lights, you can forget how night hovers over you, how utterly black the world can get. There's a reason most folklore is filled with stories of creatures that lurk just out of sight in the shadows and you can't forget that at the cottage. Still, the world isn't swimming in ink, not yet, not with the full moon up.

After all, when your eyes adjust, when you sit in the darkness long enough, the moon alone seems so bright you can walk confidently in its dim light. The sand seems to almost glow tonight, shimmering in the cold autumn air. The beach in fall can be desolate but they've come anyway, left the city and its endlessly pressing demands to do nothing, to just be. Hermione's wrapped herself in an old blanket and sits on the porch swing, curled into a tired ball against Draco's chest.

"I can't do this anymore," he says, suddenly. "I can't walk this line anymore. I've struggled against this, knowing it's not fair. It's not fair to you. You – gods, Hermione – you deserve so much more than me. I'm a horror, a nightmare. I've never told you about my childhood, my life before - "

She shifts, twisting in his lap so she can look up at his face. It's utterly bleak. He's staring off into the water, watching the moon fall below the horizon. "You don't have to," she whispers. "Not if you don't want to. I love you, who you are now. You don't have to excuse or explain who you were at ten, what you did as a child, what you believed years ago."

"But it's shaped me, and, I don't know, maybe I can move and adapt within that mold, within that framework, but it'll never not be there." He tightens his arms around her as if it's the last time, as if he's afraid to let go. "You – you grew up in a world with people who were decent. Maybe not heroes, surely they didn't expect you to sacrifice yourself on the alter of saving the world the way you did, but… my mother may have lied at the end to save me but – and I know you like her - but she's not a good person. She's not a kind person. She's selfish and ruthless and she'd walk over the bodies of children without looking down to get something she wanted."

"I know," she murmurs, "But, Draco…"

He cuts her off. "And she's a saint next to my father. She's a fucking gold mine of the milk of human kindness next to the monster who raised me, who was my model for what it meant to be a man. I can never tell you, I would rather have my tongue cut out than tell you, the sorts of things he considered normal."

"You aren't him," her gut is clenching.

"No?" He laughs hoarsely. "A brand on my arm says otherwise."

"Why are you doing this?" She's digging her nails into the palm of her hands. "You aren't him. You aren't some monster. You're a decent, thinking, caring man. Why are you torturing yourself this way?"

"Because you'll never leave." She can feel her breath hitch, the edges of her eyes are starting to itch. "Because you deserve more than me, more than this broken, disaster that I am, this person who has no idea how to do this, how to be something approaching good. Gods, being with you, it's so easy, you make me so happy, happy in ways I didn't even know I could feel; you should be smart enough, you know, to run as fast and as far as you can before I somehow explode all over you and destroy you too. I - you make me want to be a better person, a stronger person, and, Hermione, I don't know if I can - "

"I don't think," she whispers, "that I can do this without you any more."

"I told myself," he's going on, as if she hadn't spoken, "every step of the way that it was okay. That we could do this, that we could hold on to this fire just a little bit and not get burned. We can be friends, I thought. There's no danger in being friends. And that was so good, so perfect. Then, we can be lovers, I thought. Neither of us is inexperienced; it doesn't have to mean anything other than a fun time. That's what I told myself. Then, I can love her, I thought, after that. I can be loved. It won't burn out of control, it won't, I can control it, but for right now I can taste this. It won't last, after all. She'll figure out what you are, I told myself, who you are, and pull away but just taste this while you can, hold on to it while you can. Sure, it'll be that much worse when it's over but suck the marrow out of what few pleasures life holds out to you and all - "

"I know who you are," she says, desperately. "I'm not going anywhere. It doesn't have to be worse."

"I know." His voice is hoarse, raw. "You'll never leave. I don't understand how you can stay but, trust me, I have no doubt at all you'd stay. But you deserve so much better than me, someone good. And if I were even a halfway decent human being I'd clear the field, give you the space to find someone who might come close to being your equal. I'd let you find someone that doesn't risk waking up as a monster one day, wouldn't even think of wanting you tied forever to this darkness. But, gods help me Hermione, I can't. I can't let this fire go, not even if it burns me and, oh gods, not even if it burns you and I'm so sorry."

The moon has slid under the water, sun's reflection gone, moon's watery reflection gone. It feels colder out without that glow.

He grabs her by the shoulders and shaking, pulls her up and around until his mouth is on hers, until he's shivering against her in the cold air, until he's nearly lost his breath into her. She's clambering, awkwardly, her mouth never leaving his, to shift herself against him now that she's turned around, her knees poking and jabbing until she's half-straddling him on the too small swing, until she drops one foot to brace against the ground. "I love you," he gasps into her, pressing his forehead into hers, sagging against her as she struggles to pull the blanket back up and over them both. "You are the one true thing, the only lighthouse keeping me safe against the drowning horrors." He feels the tears hovering at the edge of her eyes, wipes them with his thumb. "No," he whispers, "Gods, I'm making a right mess of this."

"What _is_ this," she whispers, leaning against him, clutching the blanket at her shoulders with one hand, the other hand bracing against his chest.

"It's… will you marry me?" The words are almost lost under the creak of the porch swing, groaning as they shift slightly back and forth, under the slap of the water against the sand.

She doesn't answer, can't answer, and just turns to look out toward the water, the sinking blackness of sky and sea. He waits, watching her. The moon is gone, there's no light at all and she's nothing now but a dark shape against a darker background.

"Ask me again," she says finally.

"I love you," he whispers. "I love who you are, I love who you make me be. I love waking up with you, I love watching you work, I love seeing you across the room and knowing you are mine. You have bewitched me and the thought of being without you torments me, has tormented me for months. Knowing what I am, what I came from, what I might turn into, will you still let me be always officially yours?" He's holding out, dredged from a pocket, a simple ring sitting unceremoniously on his palm. "Please do me the honor…"

She turns back, drops the blanket which falls down with a coarse shudder, wraps her arms around him, feels him shaking against her, feels his heart going like mad and -

"Yes," she says, "Yes, yes I will. Yes."

~ Finis ~

. . . . . . . . . . . .

**A/N** –

"_I put my arms around him yes and drew him down Jo me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes." From Ulysses by James Joyce_

_I knew, shortly after I started this in July, that I wanted to get them to the proposal, complete with the homage to Joyce's Ulysses for my wandering Draco._

_Thank you to everyone who has stuck with me through this. I remember when I looked down at my phone after Chapter 1 and had immense shock that two people had actually clicked "follow" for this story. Lord of the Fabulousness and SlythCullen – you have no idea how thrilled those surely idle clicks of yours made me. _

_Thank you to my most recent reviewers: ellie1788, Blackcat8539, Guest, Blue Luver5000, Dncetilyadrop, Elle Leigh, Mistress-Cinder, thfourteenth, Grovek26, DanielaP, VeryBerry96, Darc-Lover, GTH, nikki98, Chester99, KincaidBabe, LadiePhoenix007. _

_I am starting an "alternate ending" in which Theo joins their little mix instead of being handed off to Luna. I will probably only update monthly but I'd be tremendously flattered if you wanted to follow the other fork in the road of this fic. It will be M rated for a reason, as people say. And, of course, I'm working away at my political dark dramoine which seems to want to be rather long._

_Again, thank you all. Big, squishy, awkward hugs for everyone. Your reviews have been, and are, and will be, the sunshine in my winter :)  
_


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